The Thoughts You Spent the Year With

What if you could get a compilation of your thoughts for the year? What if your brain could give you a summary list of the sentences you thought the most, the thoughts you spent the most time with, and the words that ran through your mind more than any others?

On this episode of the podcast, I do an honest assessment of the thoughts I spent the year with and look at what they created in my life. I found powerful, useful thoughts that allowed me to do lots of things I wanted…and plenty of thoughts that didn’t. 

Today, I invite you to examine your own thoughts and think about the words you spend the most time with. 

Because as you look back on the results you created this year, they are all really a reflection of the thoughts you spent the most time thinking.

 What thoughts would make your top 10? And would you want to change any of them?

My Top 10 Thoughts of 2022

Do any of these resonate or sound familiar to you?

1. It’s supposed to hurt. It’s supposed to be painful. This one came up a LOT while training for my endurance event. The pain was there to help me progress and change. 
2. This isn’t working. I’m failing. Remember that as long as you are showing up and doing the work, you haven’t failed. You are still here.
3. This is the part where we are brave. This is one that supports me often when my brain offers up thoughts and feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. When I think I’m just not good enough or something may not go very well, this thought helps me take the next step anyway.
4. I don’t know… Whether it’s about my home, business or any other goals, this one likes to pop in. I don’t know how. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what’s next. Finding ann answer to this thought is part of my work for 2023.
5. I hate his job. I’m not a fan of my husband’s work hours, and I’ve realized that this thought has built up a lot of resentment towards his job. 
6. I’m proud of you. I’ve been practicing this one for a couple of years now and use it daily. At the end of the day, I list 3 things I’m proud of. And it has changed my relationship with myself. 
7. Do it with love. You can do everything with more love. I got this thought from my endurance event (of course!) because I felt so much love from the people around me. I decided I want love to be my motivation, and it has made my life a little bit sweeter.
8. No “C” is ever wasted. Sometimes, we resist circumstances in our lives. We wish things were different. But we’re not in charge of our circumstances. We can only control how we respond. Every circumstance can teach us something. It is all useful and important  in helping me learn how to choose. It’s a reminder that every experience here is valuable, even the ones that are hard, even the ones that are excruciating.
9. I am bad …. And that’s okay. My brain regularly tells me that I’m bad, but I added a little addendum recently. Being bad is not wrong. We are all good. And we are all bad. It is an invitation to be grateful for grace. 
10. What if I wanted to be the same? I want to be the same. There have been a lot of times when I’ve wanted to be different. When I fought against who I was and the way I was showing up. But this fight and resistance only makes it harder to change. So now, when my brain wants to criticize me, I just say to myself, “I want to be the same.” I want to be making this choice, I want to be feeling what I'm feeling. I want to be who I am in this moment. It has brought me so much peace, love and compassion for myself and others in my life.

How to assess your thoughts

I would love for you to do an assessment of your own life, to look around and ask yourself:

What are the thoughts that I've spent the most time with? 

What are the sentences that I have spent hours with over this year that have added up and are creating results in my life? 

And I want you to do it kindly. I want you to look gently, be honest with yourself, and be curious about what they are and what results they are creating in your life. Try not to condemn yourself for any of them, just notice.

Changing your thoughts

Most of the thoughts your brain gives you are coming to you by default. Your brain is giving them to you not by request, because your brain believes it will be useful in keeping you alive. 

Don't make yourself wrong for that. But know that you can change it. 

Know that when your brain offers you a thought that you have not requested and that you no longer want to think, that you can reprogram it and decide to think something else. 

You can change the song, you can change the sentence, you can think what you want to think.

Now ask yourself, “Are there any thoughts on this list that I would like to change?”

If you change just one of them, it will change your life. Start by choosing one, and decide that every time your brain gives you this thought, you’re going to think something else. 

What is one sentence that you want to spend time with next year? What is the one sentence that would change your life more than any other?

I dare you to see what happens when you change just one of them. Think about the words that you spend time with and know that if you change those words, it will change what you are creating in your life. 

You’ll Learn:

• How the playlist of your thoughts creates the life you see around you
• My top 10 thoughts of 2022
• Questions to ask yourself to uncover your own thought patterns
• What to do if the thoughts you’ve been thinking haven’t created the results you want

Episode Transcripts

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price. You might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome.

Hello Podcast Universe! Welcome to episode 189 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and maybe you can hear it, but I have a little bit of a cold today. I am still delighted to be here with you on the podcast. We are smack dab in the middle of December, just ten days away from Christmas. And this is always the part of the year where I start to panic a little bit. All my thoughts about how much there is to do and how little time I have left really start to make me feel a little bit anxious. And it happens to me every single year, and I think that is because every single year in October and November, when I start to have thoughts that like I should start preparing for the upcoming holidays, I always think, no, no, no, there's plenty of time. Don't be silly, don't be ridiculous. Like, no, we don't need to work on any of that yet, right? That's not the priority, and so I guess if I ever want to change the result of having a different kind of December, I'm going to have to change that thought, right? Because if nothing changes, nothing changes.

And just so you know, the same goes for you. If you ever have the thought to sign up for coaching and you think, well, not now, there's plenty of time, don't be ridiculous. Like, let's not get excited, right? I can always do it later or I'll figure it out myself. But if you find yourself telling yourself those thoughts, but also pretty much staying the same and living your life the way you always have, listen, just know that if you ever want to change the result, you are going to have to change those thoughts, right? You're going to have to think, now is the perfect time. This is the best thing I can do for myself. You're going to have to think that what you want is important.

And so, this podcast is actually going to be coming out in a couple of weeks from the time I'm recording it. And signups for my next group will be over by then. We are probably already full. But if you miss those sign ups and you want in to the January coaching group, please just reach out to me at Aprilpricecoaching.com and I will see if there is still a spot available for you to join us in January.

Okay, so let's get on to the episode. I'm really excited about this episode. It's going to be short and sweet and just to give you a thought, to shake things up for you and inspire you as you think about the the year that you've just had and the year that is coming. So, probably most of you, if you listen to Spotify, have the experience of receiving an email in December that gives you like a summary of all of the music and artists that you've listened to throughout the year, right? It's one of the highlights of December when you get your Spotify wrapped in your inbox and it shows you on there like how you spent your time, the artist that you hung out with the most, right? The collection of music that meant the most to you that that you spent the most time listening to and the songs that you heard over and over again throughout the year. And I always think this is a really fun thing, right?

And I was laughing with my son, we saw a meme in like maybe a month ago that said, like, Hey, your Spotify wrapped is coming out in a few weeks, so if you want to make any changes and not be embarrassed about what you've been listening to, now is the time, right? And anyway, it's just fun to have this record of like how you have spent the time in your in your headphones, like the time you have spent listening to music. And I was just looking over my Spotify rap today and I noticed this phrase that they had written in the summary. They said all that listening added up and then made a list of how it added up. For me. It was over 20,000 hours listening to music, over a thousand artists, over 1500 different songs. And then it said, but you spent the most time listening to The Killers and you spent 887 minutes together. And that's a lot of time, right? But I loved how it how it phrased that. It said you spent 887 minutes together. And I really loved the thought of that, right? That like the things that we are listening to, the things in our ears, we were spending minutes together with those artists.

And in fact, you spent a lot of minutes probably last year listening to this podcast. And I am so grateful to every one of you spent minutes with me here on the podcast that this spent minutes with my voice and my thoughts in your ears. That means so much to me, but also really made me think about like, what if we could each get a wrapped compilation summary of our thoughts? Like what? If our brain in December could like send us an email to our inbox and said, Hey, here's a summary of the thoughts you thought most often this year.

These are the sentences that you spent the most time with in 2022. And what if it could make a list of like your top ten thoughts, the thoughts that you spent more time thinking about than any other? And if you could get a list of the thoughts that you thought most often. Would you change any of them? Now, it's really interesting to think about this for a minute, right? Because, of course, our brain doesn't produce a list like that. But we can look around at the results of our life. And in so many ways, the results of our life are like a compilation. They're like an email from our brain that said, hey, this is what you've been thinking all year. Because as I look at the results that I created this year, it's a reflection of the thoughts that I spent the most time thinking, Hey, and of course, over the course of the year, you are going to have millions and millions and millions of thoughts. But I want you to think for a minute about the ones that you spent the most time with.

And what that is creating for you, as you look around your life. What have you been thinking the most about and what is it creating for you? And do you want to change that in any way? And just like Spotify says, all that listening adds up. All the listening we do to our own brains adds up. All the listening we do to the sentences in our brain. They add up and they create feelings, those drive our actions and those create the results in our life. It's all adding up. So today I just decided to do kind of an honest assessment to try and really think about to look at the results in my life and try to really think about what are the thoughts. I have created those this year and really think about what are the thoughts that I spent the most time with, what are the thoughts I thought most often so that I can either keep thinking those thoughts that are creating what I want or tweak the ones that didn't and possibly make some changes in my life for next year.

So, as we go through this list, I'm just going to give you, as I see it, like the top ten thoughts that I spent the most time with. Some of them are awesome, as you will see, and some of them are not so awesome. But as I go through my list, I want to invite you to think about the thoughts in your life that you spent the most time with this year. Okay, so the first thought that I that I know that I spent a lot of the year with probably like a good three quarters of my year, I spent thinking almost every single day is the thought it's supposed to hurt, it's supposed to be painful. And I'm from the outside, this doesn't sound like a very happy thought. Does it sound like a very positive thought? But this thought allowed me to create some of the best experiences of my life in 2022. And I definitely think it was the thought that I used the most. I thought it almost every day and sometimes many, many times during the day. It was the sentence of the year for me, really. It was the sentence that I spent the most minutes with. Like we added it up. I'm pretty sure this would be my top sentence.

And so, if if you think back to when I was training for my endurance event, like almost every day for 60 minutes of that day, my brain would complain and say, This is too hard, this training hurts too much. It's not supposed to hurt this much. We should be farther along and it's like it fought so hard against the pain and discomfort that was required in training. And every time I would answer back, it's supposed to hurt. I want it to hurt. It needs to hurt in order for me to progress. It's supposed to be painful so that I can change. And like that allowed me to, like, continue to stick with my training, to continue to take the actions that created the results. That meant so much to me this year. And so, yeah, I spent a lot of time with that thought. And, you know, I kind of have such fond feelings towards it. Like it really got me through some really hard times.
Okay the next thought that I think I spent a lot of time with, especially in the beginning of the year, was the thought, This isn't working. And like kind of the companion thought that I thought a lot of times with that was like, and I'm failing like, this isn't working and I'm failing, right? And I was thinking about my year, and especially in the spring, like around March, from like March to July. So, that like, you know, that that second quarter of the year, this thought really badgered and nagged me and I had an almost every day, right? And like almost the more I had it like I would start to panic and be like, I got to stop thinking this and I just I would almost make me think it more right. And so, like, I really, really struggled with this thought that that my business wasn't working and that I was failing at it. And it just wasn't wasn't creating the results that I wanted. And I kept thinking this thought. And finally, like in July, I had this realization. So, all through the spring I kept thinking like, I'm doing this wrong, it isn't working. I'm failing, I'm going to lose my business.

And finally, in July, I recognized and realized that, like, you know what? As long as I was here, then I had a business like that. Like my brain kept telling me I was going to lose it. But like, as long as I was there and I kept working in it, then there was always going to be a business. Like, I just realized suddenly one day, as long as I don't stop, I haven't failed. As long as I don't stop, like I still have a business, as long as I am here because I'm the coach, like I'm always going to have that business.

So, I was able to turn that thought around. But I will admit, like I spent a good portion of that of the year thinking that thought and spending some time with it. And like, I'm glad that part is over. Okay, the next thought that I thought a lot this year and actually have thought a lot over the last several years is this is the part where we are brave. This is a thought that I use almost on a daily basis. My brain likes to offer me like anxiety and like inadequacy. My brain likes to tell me that, like, I'm not good enough, right? Probably like many of your brains. And I just this is one of those thoughts that's just a really easy answer to my brain. Like what? My brain tells me I'm not good enough. And. And, like, I might look stupid and I might not be, you know, I might be inadequate for what's ahead of me. I just think to myself, this is the part where we are brave. And when I'm scared and when I'm anxious and when I think like this might not go very well, I just think this thought, this is the part where we are brave. This isn't the part where we need to feel confident.

This isn't the part where we need to feel capable and good. We just need to be brave. We just need to be courageous. And this has helped me in my business. It has helped me in difficult moments in my mothering this year. It's also really helped me. Like, like I said on the mountain, there were many times on the mountain when I was competing in the endurance event, when I was scared and anxious that I wouldn't make it. And I was like, okay, but this is the part where we are just brave and we're just tough, right? And so, this is a thought that that I think probably on a daily basis.

The next thought was probably for sure in my top ten is, I don't know. This is like I feel like my brain just like, loves this thought and like, offers it to me as often as it can, right? Whether it's about like the things going on at home, the things in my business, whether it's like, what should I, you know, share on the podcast? What should my next goal be? My brains like, I don't know. I don't know how I don't know what I want. I don't know what's next. I don't know what to say. Like, my brain is always just like, I don't know. Yay! So, this is one of those thoughts that I'm going to be working on in 2023 that I like. I want an answer to this, and my brain always wants to give it to me. I don't know. But it's one of those that I know is not serving me and I want to be able to change. The next thought that I thought has really, you know, as I've looked around my life and thought about the results that I've created, I've I've found this thought and I was surprised at how much I have been thinking it. But I noticed, like, this was a big part of my life.

And this thought is I hate his job. This is a thought that I thought a lot this year about David's job. His job just has like the kind of hours that I don't love. And especially with Ethan leaving home and being empty nesters, I just feel like, you know, like I'm home alone a lot and my brain wants to tell me that David's job is the problem. And like it offers me very often, like maybe most weekdays, I hate his job, right? As I looked at the results of my life, I noticed, just like how much resentment I've created this year towards David's job and towards his decisions and his choices there. And and it really makes me step back and think like, do I want to keep this thought in the New year? Do I want to keep thinking that I hate his job? Do I want to keep thinking that it's not what I want and then it's not good for him and then it's not good for our family. Like, this line of thinking isn't really creating the results I want. It's getting in the way of the relationship I want. Like even when he does come home, I notice myself taking a while to warm up to him. I feel kind of that like hard little like rock in my in my chest when he walks in the door.

And so, this is another one of those thoughts that I think I've spent a lot of time with and I think I'm done with. I don't really think I want to take this into the new year. Okay, another thought that I think on a daily basis is I'm proud of you. And this is something that I worked on a couple of years ago, really getting to the place where I could be proud of myself. I noticed at the end of every day, even though I had accomplished a lot of the things I wanted and and had intentionally chosen, like the actions and the feelings and the things that I was going to do every single day. Like I still noticed at the end of the day, my brain being like, Well, it wasn't good enough because of this and it wasn't good enough because of this. And so I really made an effort to think I am proud of myself. And every day I got into this habit of when I was changing my clothes to name three things that I was proud of. And that is a habit that has that has really stuck with me. And at the end of the day, as I'm changing and putting on my sweats, I just like look over my day and list three things that I'm proud of.

And I have to say that as I have like thought about, well, what thoughts have I spent the most time with? Like, I can say that I have spent time every day with this that I am proud of you, like I've intentionally required myself to notice the ways that I am proud of myself. Yeah, I love this thought and it has changed my relationship with myself. Okay, I have a few more thoughts that I've spent time with this year that I wanted to share. These next four thoughts I really didn't get until the last quarter of the year, but I've spent a lot of time in the last quarter thinking them, and I think they've really been useful and I just want to share them with you in case you want to adopt them for the first quarter of 2023.

The first one is like, do it with love, and I got this thought, of course, from my 29029 endurance event. On that mountain, I felt so much love from the people who came to support me, from the people putting on the event. And I was so impacted and touched by that love. Then I decided like I wanted love to be my motivation and I'm just always telling myself, do it with love. And whenever I feel sort of some resistance or or like my brain not wanting to do something like play the organ at church, for example, which like terrifies me and intimidates me. But I've had a lot of opportunities in the last quarter, and I always just tell myself, Yeah, I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it with love. And like it's it's just one of those things that has made my life a little bit sweeter. Like everything I do, I'm doing it anyway. But now I consciously think, Yeah, I'm going to do this with love. And it just like it has made my life so much better. And I love that thought. The next thought that I spent a lot of time with recently is no sea is ever wasted. And what I mean by this is that, like sometimes we're very resistant to the circumstances in our life and especially in the last quarter.

So, things have happened in my personal life and my family life, and I've found myself like really wishing it was different, really wishing it was different for some of the people I loved, really wishing that the circumstances were different. And one day I was going to go help one of my kids and I was at the airport and I just could tell like I was so tense and I was feeling so upset inside. And I just noticed like, how resistant I was to the circumstance, how much I wanted the circumstance to be different. And I remembered in that moment, like, of course, like I'm not in charge of the circumstances. I'm in charge of what I think about the circumstances. And I just kind of settled in and recognized like, no see, no circumstance in our life is ever wasted. They're all there to teach us something. They're all there to allow us to learn to love a little better, to allow us to have more compassion for ourselves or for others, to allow us to learn something about ourselves or about God that every see is useful.

Like so many times, like we just want the good circumstances. We just want the positive things happening in our lives. But no "C" is ever wasted. No circumstances ever waste is all useful in my learning. It's all useful in helping me become it's all useful in helping me learn how to choose. And in fact, it's all the reason that I came to Earth in the first place. And so, when I find myself tensing up against the things that are happening in my life that I wish were different, I just love this thought to remind myself, Hey, hey, April, no circumstance is ever wasted. They're all useful. They're all important. They're all here to help you learn to choose. And it just reminds me that every experience here is valuable. Even the ones that are hard. Even the ones that are excruciating. So the next thought is kind of like a little addendum. So, my brain likes to offer me the thought I am bad. Like, I, for whatever reason, my brain likes to give that thought to me regularly, at least every day, right? I am bad, and it just likes to, like, spit that out to me.

And it's one of those thoughts that I, you know, admittedly have spent a lot of my life thinking and spending a lot of time with, right? It would probably show up on my Spotify playlist every single year. But I just added a little addendum in the last few months that has made a big difference. And every time my brain spits out, I am bad. I remember. And that's okay. And that's okay. And I've really invited myself to embrace Grace instead of needing to be good. Like my brain is always telling me you are bad because it thinks being bad is wrong. And I like to remind it now being bad is not wrong. I was never supposed to be all good. And in fact, that's why there is grace. And instead of like, hating myself and being mad at myself every time my brain tells me I am bad instead of causing myself a lot of pain. When my brain says that, I like to just remind myself that this is an invitation to be grateful for Grace.

And I know that my brain is wrong. Most of the time it tells me I am bad. Is just what my brain does. But like, instead of, like, feeling so, like, mad at myself, it's just an invitation to, like, love, grace to love God, to love the compassionate plan of mercy that is just like, Hey, guess what, April, You are bad, but you were never supposed to be good. And that's why there is grace and spending more time with those useful thoughts. Like, I just think that those are really good thoughts to spend time with.

The last thought that I have spent a lot of time with this year, especially in this last quarter, is the thought, What if I wanted to be the same? This store is one that was given to me by my coach when I was really just struggling to like myself and like where I was at in my life and like the choices that I was making. And I remember going to her and like, just crying and saying, like, I wish I could be different. I was so badly that I could be different. And this thought I had just like, turned things around for me and have turned things around for me daily. So, when she just said to me, like, What if you wanted to be the same? What if you just wanted to be the same and I could see, like, how much resistance and rejection I was putting out there, how much I was fighting against who I was, and the way that I was showing up. And that is the hardest way to change, let me tell you.

And so I have thought of this again and again, that whenever my brain goes to criticize me and just like, you know, roll its eyes at me and tell me that I need to be different, I just say to myself, I want to be the same. And ironically, it doesn't keep me the same. It is the thought that allows me to change the fastest is just like accepting where I am, allows me to change the fastest. So this that I want to be the same. I want to be making this choice. I want to be feeling what I'm feeling. I want to be who I am in this moment. He's just been like, super, super helpful. And just like the first thought that I shared with you, like, it's supposed to be painful. This probably to you may not sound that great. Like I want to be this safe. Like, how is that inspiring? But it really allows me to set down that really critical, mean part of me and instead step into love and compassion and from there, make whatever changes I want.

Is also been really helpful in my relationships, like when I think people in my life should be different or I think they should be showing up differently for me to just drop into like what if I wanted it to be the same? Just allows me to let go of so much resistance and like rejection of who they are and the way they're showing up and the choices they're making. So, it's one of those thoughts I'm just so grateful for. It has had such a big impact on the amount of peace and love and compassion that I have felt in my life this year. I feel like it's changed my relationship with myself and with the people that I love most.

Okay, so this is kind of my top ten. I would love for you to do an assessment of your own life to look around and ask yourself, what are the thoughts that I've spent the most time with? What are the sentences that I have spent hours with over this year that have added up and are creating results in my life? And I want you to do it kindly. I want you to just, like, gently look and be honest with yourself and think about, like, not condemning yourself for any of them, but just like, curiously, compassionately looking. What are the thoughts that I have spent the most time with, and are there any there that I would like to change? I want to offer you that if you change just one of them, it will change your life. You want to change all of the thoughts all at once. Like, honestly, just picking one. Just deciding. Every time my brain gives me this thought, I'm going to think something else that will change your life. Like, I want to point out to you that like, listen, this is a little different than my Spotify list because my Spotify list is completely intentionally programmed.

I'm listening to the songs I'm listening to, like by intention, I'm choosing them. Most of the thoughts your brain gives you are just coming to you by default. Your brain is producing them. Your brain is giving them to you not by request, but because your brain believes it will be useful in keeping you alive. Don't make yourself wrong for that, but know that you can change it. Know that when your brain offers you a thought that you have not requested and that you no longer want to think that you can deliberately and intentionally reprogram it and decide to think something else.

You can change the song. You can change the sentence. You can think what you want to think. What is one sentence that you want to spend time with next year? What is the one sentence that if you spent more time with it, if you thought it more than any other sentence, what is the sentence that would change your life more than any other? I was talking to a client just today, and her brain often gives her the thought, You've never been able to do this. And today I was asking her, What if we just changed this one sentence? What if we just decided that every time our brain told us, I've never been able to do this? We thought something else.

What if every time our brain said it, we thought, I am strong, I am capable. I can do this. Or what if every time your brain said, I've never been able to do this? Instead, you said, I will not quit. I want you to know that a single thought can change your life. Decide now. What is the thought that I'm not going to think? What is the thought? That every time my brain gives it to me, I'm going to purposely think something else. What is the thought I'm going to spend the most time with? Next year, I dare you to see what happens when you change just one of them. Think about the words that you spend time with and know that if you change those words or the ratio of time that you spend with them, it will change what you are creating in your life. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening and I'll see you next week.

The next round of my coaching program made four more starts in January, and I want you to be a part of it. I'll show you how to change your brain to create more joy, more love, and more accomplishment in your life. The only thing between you and the life you want are the thoughts in your head. And coaching will show you how to change that. Go to Aprilpricecoaching.com to sign up.