Episode #73- What You Focus On, You Create More Of

This was a fun episode for me.  As much as I love science and research about the power of the mind in healing, I also really like energy, vibrations, and the woo.  

 

Here I make a case for energy, the law of attraction, serendipities, manifesting and magic!!!  Be sure and listen, as I explain it scientifically.  And make a case for believing in fun and magic to add a little excitement to your life and your healing journey.

 

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Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode #73- What You Focus On, You Create More Of. 

In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts- to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become unstoppable, body and mind.

Hello my loves. Today I'm excited to share with you a side of me that I don't often show you. There is a part of me that loves science and the scientific explanation and research. And that is mainly what I focus on on this podcast. Because I want people to have an understanding of their pain in a new way that doesn't sound like, really hokey and like a snake oil salesman. It's backed up by science and that is super exciting for me. But there is also part of me that does believe in magic and serendipities and energy and vibrations and the law of attraction. And so the way that I'm going to describe it here is that what you focus on you create more of. And I think I can actually merge some of the woo, some of the spirituality and vibrations and energy and explain it in a quite scientific way.

So listen on in this episode if you're used to just the science part and you've really liked that. And if you're someone like me that gets a little bit excited by manifesting things and thinking of attracting things on purpose, using your thoughts to create your reality in a way that you want. Then hopefully this is an episode that you really resonate with and you can see that there's another side to this work that can be kind of fun and magical and exciting. 

Now to start off, I'll say I haven't always been a very intuitive person. I've always been someone that's believed in kind of forces, and even extra sensory perception. And all of those kinds of things really fascinated me in my teenage years. In fact I used to really wish that I was kind of more psychic because I believed in this kind of stuff, but I really didn't think that I had the capacity.  I thought it was kind of something that you either had or you didn't. And I was just not really an intuitive person. 

Now, a few years back when I started getting into all of this, I was going through quite a few life changes, getting divorced. And that's when my friend from med school told me that ulcerative colitis was psychosomatic. So I was starting all of this work and I got really into the secret and John Sarno and Joe Dispenza kind of all at the same time. In fact, Joe Dispenza's book, Becoming Supernatural, I think I listened to it eight times in a row. I just listened to it over and over and over and almost wanted to absorb all of the knowledge into myself. I also had an awesome friend who believed in all of this kind of stuff as much or more than I did.  And he really thought I was magic, and so he helped me see things in my life that were pretty magical. And I started really believing that I was pretty magical too. And all of these serendipities started happening. 

During this time I was really learning about how powerful thoughts are and the emotions, the vibrations in our body they create. And at that time in my life I really had a lot of financial strain. So I was working on receiving what was there for me when people would offer things during that time. And I was also practicing working on abundance, which was a little bit interesting. It took a lot of creativity to practice abundance at a time when I didn't feel like I had enough. But by practicing receiving, I always did have enough. And I also started manifesting money. When I was listening to... (I listen to books rather than read them.  So especially at that time in my life I was driving around a lot for work.) So I was listening to a lot of books and podcasts, and I think I listened to The Secret two or three times in a row (not as much as Joe Dispenza.) 

But when I started really practicing some of those beliefs about money I did start receiving random checks in the mail and it's read in an Australian accent. So it was "chicks in the mayo." I got these "chicks in the mayo" that were from my Pediatrician's office from 2014, an overpayment of $19. And an overpayment here and there, money just started showing up. It was really cool, really crazy. And then a few months later I actually manifest $15,000, which was pretty crazy. Basically it was money that was owed to me for a few years at my work I'd been working five hours more per week than what they had been paying me. And I was just asking and getting curious about how I could earn more money.  And when we started investigating at my work they found that they owed me all of this back pay and they actually paid me all of it. 

So some amazing things happened when I started practicing abundance and I started to actually receive more and more. I know there are a lot of people that have read or listened to The Secret or watched the movie, and really do not like the law of attraction because of the way they interpreted The Secret and how the law of attraction works. So if you're one of those people and you're still curious about how you can really take your life to the next level and start creating things, then I would recommend that you check out Joe Dispenza.  He has such a great way of describing these spiritual, woo things scientifically. And it basically has to do with quantum physics. 

We know as we start to study smaller and smaller molecules that we are mainly made of energy. And all of the matter around us is actually mainly made of energy even though it looks solid. So everything is vibrating to some degree at this energetic level. And when things are vibrating at the same frequency, then they're a match, like attracts like. If I lost you there and that got a little weird that there's vibrations and like attracts like, then just think of this analogy. 

If you are newly in love and you're just feeling that emotion, that excitement and you're driving home and you might notice things differently when you're in that vibration of excited emotion and love. So reality is out there no matter what, but you because of the vibration of being in love might notice the birds sound extremely beautiful today.  And the sun is just glistening just right, and there's flowers that you never noticed before. And when someone cuts you off you just kind of smile and wonder why that ever bugged you. Because you're in that vibration, you're attracting to you or you're creating for yourself or what you're interpreting from this big, vast array of reality is what aligns with the vibration that you are in. 

Reality is huge and we tend to think that what our brain interprets and what we have thoughts about and the way we think about things is reality. But just imagine the frequency of what we can see. Our eyes can pick up certain frequencies of light and others we cannot perceive with our eyes. But maybe other animals could perceive them, right? Same with sounds like a dog whistle. That's not in our perception of our ears to pick up, but it doesn't mean that that dog whistle doesn't make a sound.  It's just not what we're perceiving from reality because that's not part of what we can perceive because it's not vibrationally in our range. 

And we know that part of our brain, the reticular activating system, its whole job is to basically filter reality for us. If we have beliefs about certain things, the reticular activating system will find things that back up those beliefs and totally reject or dismiss maybe not even have in your perception that things that don't back up your beliefs are even out there. So even if you don't believe in energy and vibrations and woo and love attraction, then I think I can show you how just by understanding your brain and the way that the reticular activating system works that what you focus on you create more of. 

So let's take for example someone who believes that driving is dangerous. So I know someone who believes that driving is dangerous.  And so when she gets in the car, she's feeling a little afraid. That's the emotion that it causes for her. Because of that fear I've seen her start to slam on the brakes when the light turns yellow, kind of like preventatively,. "It's turning yellow I'll just slam on the brakes." Or I've also seen this person stop in a roundabout, because the person coming up she thought maybe wasn't going to stop and. So she stopped in the roundabout. With those two examples you can probably see how she's more likely to cause an accident because of the way she's driving out of fear. Right? So she didn't have the thought that driving was dangerous, she might not feel as much fear and do those kind of unexpected driving techniques that actually would be more likely to cause an accident because people are not expecting someone to drive that way.

So it's not necessarily like because she has the thought that driving is dangerous she attracts more accidents to her, but you can see how by having that thought and the feeling it creates she is more likely to act in a way that proves her thoughts true. And often we can find evidence for what we believe is true. Sometimes even conflicting things we can find evidence on either side. Most of us just think that what we're perceiving, what we're thinking is reality. 

And so I hope this helps you see that if you have some thoughts, you could be actually creating your own reality. And this is a really good thing to realize because this is where you have a lot of power. A lot of us are focusing our attention on trying to change other people or trying to change situations or trying to change things that are outside of our control. But the area that we have the most control is our own thoughts.  And fortunately that's the most powerful thing that we can use to actually change our reality. I love those optical illusions and visual illusions that you can find online to prove to yourself that even though your brain can interpret things one way or see things one way perceive things, it doesn't mean that that is reality. And that opens up a lot of space for us to be exploring and be curious about how we could think differently. And I know this through life coaching there are coaches that coach on business and relationships and weight loss and over-drinking, and all of them do the same thing. They're working on how your thoughts are creating your reality. And it's the very same in this situation when you have chronic pain or chronic disease. 

So when we are in a certain vibration or emotion, you can think of a vibration as that emotional state that our body is in.  We only have the capacity to perceive things that are in that same vibration. That's another way of thinking of like attracts like or what we focus on we create more of. 

Another way to look at it and you might be able to see examples of this in your life is that when we are in a certain vibration we may actually block things that are coming to us. If we feel very unworthy when someone offers to help, we may decline that help and literally not receive from them something because we block it ourselves feeling like we are not deserving of it. Especially in our society, you might have been taught that you're supposed to do things on your own and that it's weak to accept help. And so look for ways that maybe you are also blocking yourself from receiving some of the things that you do want.

So if we think of our thoughts as having vibrations and having energy and being sent out into the universe and finding vibrational matches and attracting things to us, or if we think of our thoughts as kind of a bandwidth of what we have the capacity of seeing and receiving from reality, either way you can see how your thoughts are influential on how you perceive the world and the results that you have in your life right now. Now as humans our main way that we react with our reality is to notice what's around us and the things we don't like. And we focus on the things that we don't like. Often that's what we mainly focus on, right? Because we want to change them. And especially like other people, other situations, we want that all to change and we focus on that. And like what I was just saying, what you focus on you create more of.

So when we are good at noticing things we don't like and we're focusing on things we don't like, we tend to see more and perceive more of those things we don't like. We're on the lookout for them. And with pain this can happen. You become more and more hypervigilant about the pain and it's a normal thing. I'm not criticizing in any way. Of course you're going to be hypervigilant about not wanting pain. But when we step back and look at it as something that we can rewire and change, it's good to see that these patterns that run normally and subconsciously are also not serving us. When someone has pain and focuses a lot on the pain there tends to be a lot of fear around the pain and catastrophizing. And as you know if you've listened to Episode # 69, and if you haven't then you should, there is this Pain-Fear-Pain cycle.

And so having pain that creates fear as a normal response actually causes the brain to create more pain. And so if you've been dealing with pain for months, years, or decades, your brain has been used to creating a lot of this pain. That's what can be rewired so your brain is producing less pain. But where most people start and sometimes even get stuck is in focusing on not wanting the pain. And as I'm talking about in this episode, what you focus on you create more of. So they create more of not wanting the pain. So that might look like going throughout their day looking for the pain, expecting it, thinking I haven't had it, I probably will. This kind of thing always causes it. And of course these are subconscious thoughts, but again the focus is on not wanting the pain, maybe how horrible the pain is, how it's unbearable. I can't stand it. What if this never ends? What if we don't figure this out?

All of these catastrophizing type of thoughts actually cause your brain to produce more pain. So focusing on not wanting pain creates more of you not wanting pain, which means you're still in pain. How do you change that? Sometimes people think, "Well, I'll focus on what I do want." Right? I want to be pain free. I really want to be pain-free, I can't wait until I'm pain free fully. If only I were pain free. Do you see how that still has the same emotion of scarcity of wanting? So wanting to be pain free will create more of wanting to be pain-free meaning you're still in pain. So if the tendency is to desperately want something, you're still coming from that same energy or vibration of lack of scarcity and that will only bring you more lack.

Does that make sense? Okay. So then your brain might be thinking how do I get to pain-free? I don't care about all of these other explanations. I really just want to be pain-free, right? So how do you get there? 

I'm going to use the analogy of how I practiced abundance when I was literally borrowing money every month. I started by noticing that my needs were met. So instead of this place of scarcity of legitimately feeling like I needed more money so I didn't have to borrow, I saw that someone was willing to lend me money and my needs were met. And that no matter what since I knew how to practice receiving that my needs would always be met. I knew that I could practice accepting and receiving that help. And so even if my numbers in my bank account didn't show me that I was abundant, I could feel abundant.

I could feel that sensation of gratitude and abundance. And that reminds me, there are a lot of research studies about how when you practice gratitude, having gratitude, writing three things down every day that you're grateful for, you end up having more satisfaction in life and finding more things to be grateful for. So again, what you focus on you create more of. But again back to the analogy, when you practice more abundance, seeing the things that you already have that you're grateful for, then you actually start to see more of those things. You attract more of it into your life or you create more of it for yourself. However you think of it, more of it is there. Maybe it's always there, that's what I would argue. It's always there but we only perceive the things that back up our beliefs. 

So what I did with practicing abundance one other thing that I did was I would look for money on the ground.  I would see that as a sign from the universe that I was going to be fine. That money was always coming to me, it was easy for me to find money. And it got me really excited because when I saw that penny, I attached the meaning to it that everything is going to be okay in my life with money. I have what I need, my needs are always met. It was like this feeling of trust, this feeling of gratitude, this feeling of abundance. Just finding a penny on the ground, right? So that's a great example of how things can be out there in reality. And because of the meaning that we're attaching to it, we can create these emotions for ourselves that can either really help us or kind of keep us stuck. So to practice abundance I practiced seeing all of the things that I already could feel abundant about.

And I practiced looking out for more things to give me that feeling on purpose. Joe Dispenza talks about a walking meditation where you imagine yourself, your future self and how you might walk and talk and act and dress differently as your future self. So I would do that from a place of abundance. Someone who has oodles of money, where money just doesn't even matter at all. I'm this future rich person and I would imagine myself how I would walk and talk and act. And you could do the very same type of thing with pain. So first of all starting with how can you notice when you are pain-free or have less pain? Sometimes it's going into the body with somatic tracking. Sometimes it's focusing on the positive sensation. Like I have a meditation for both of those two things. The meditation for positive sensation has you focus on something that feels more comfortable in your body or neutral in your body.

So as I talk about being the detective for the opposite, making a case against your pain, looking for the times that you're pain free. Focusing on the enjoyment, the happiness, the excitement that that brings, imagining yourself as this pain-free person. I talk a lot about using your imagination with movement. And when you tie that to an emotion, a powerful emotion like joy or excitement or happiness that rewires your brain even faster. So using your imagination and imagining certain activities that you want to do pain-free. And if you're not able to imagine it pain-free, then that's a very, very good indication to you that your brain is very involved with creating your pain. I mean think about it, if you're not moving at all and you're imagining moving, and you're getting some kind of sensation in that area or even a recreation of your pain, then that's just those neural circuits firing, your brain being protective, thinking that there's really some danger. And you can start to rewire those pathways so that the brain creates less pain with those movements in your imagination and then those movements in real life.

So when you're wanting to manifest or use your thoughts to create the results of being pain-free, you want to come from a place of feeling this emotion of already having it even when all reality or what your mind telling you is that you don't. So every time you're practicing imagining yourself already pain-free or recognizing the things that you're doing with less pain. I've had some clients where in a period of one minute they'll tell me they're not getting better. And then they'll also list several things that they can do now with less pain or that they're taking less medicine. 

So what I'm saying is there's a lot of ways to talk about reality, to perceive your reality, and you might feel very justified in believing one way and that could be proven or it's true to you. Or you really feel that and it's strong, but it's also maybe not helping you as much as if you can start to shift your thinking in this other way.  And seeing that there are some other signs of reality like you could focus on the less medication and that you're able to do more without pain. And that's what you'll create more of. Just like a gratitude journal when you're looking for things to be grateful for it becomes easier and easier to find those things to be grateful for. When you look for ways that you're doing things with less pain or you're imagining that you can do things with less pain, then you will create more of that in your life.

So I hope this episode gives you something to think about. If you haven't really known about manifesting, law of attraction, energy vibrations, this whole side that I haven't really been talking about, but I really love talking about because like I said, I feel like it adds an element of fun. I have several people that will show me money that they've found on the ground and they'll think of me and they'll text me and they'll say, "Hey, look what I found I thought of you." And so it just adds that little bit of joy to my life knowing that more people are thinking in this purposeful way and using their powerful thoughts to create the reality that they want for themselves.

I wanted to talk about this because I am looking for about 15 people to start a group coaching program with me in September. And the type of people that I want for this group coaching are people that believe in the science and believe in mind, body, and also believe in a little bit of woo and a little bit of magic. So if this especially resonates with you and you want to learn how to combine the powers within you with the science and the evidence that I've been able to accumulate for you, then be sure and get on my mailing list where I will be telling you more about this upcoming group and where you can submit an application. You can email me at info@bodyandmindlifecoach.com and request to be on the mailing list. And I'll make sure you get the information. All right you guys, have a great week. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an Unstoppable Body and Mind.