Episode 233 Minisode: Becoming The Master Of Your Own Attention And Focus
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Hello everyone. So I do a daily podcast called Coffee with Colleen inside my emotional sobriety coaching program. These are short, sweet mini-sodes that either give you an inside look at something I’m going through in my own life or a simple, easy strategy that you can implement or both. You may hear me reference other content that only my clients have access to. So if you’re interested in learning more about my program,
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get in the show notes and schedule a discovery call with me or my team. My name is Colleen and I’m a mindful drinking coach helping high achieving professional women permanently reduce their alcohol consumption by 80%. Join me each week for evidence-based holistic strategies to regulate your nervous system, balance your dopamine and activate the growth mindset that makes you so powerful in other areas of your life.
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so you can stop worrying about losing control and trust yourself again. Get happy, not sober. It’s not about the alcohol.
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I wanna share some emotional sobriety and action and what that looked like for me this morning and how I’m applying, you know, new thought processes in my life. I woke up this morning and there was a notification on my phone and it was for an email. I don’t normally check my email, but this was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. And I’ve shared with you that I have a new habit where I wake up and
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Decide what emotional state I want to be like I’m very intentional about starting my morning in a conscious intention for my day With at least emotional goals if not specific goals. How do I want to feel today? How do I want to move throughout the world? And so the first thing I see is this email and it was urgent action required So it caught my attention. So I click into it and it’s about my old website, which is still up and active
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Colleen Cashman dot com and that’s where I have like hundreds of recipes from when I used to do coaching for nutrition and Plant-based foods and all of that and I also wrote a blog and this was for an article I wrote on preventative health care for women and the studies that kind of counteract the wellness initiatives that you know, we all have to go get mammograms and pap smears and
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all the things every year. And I was sharing the research that shows why I’ve opted out of wellness care for the most part and only for now. Okay. So all the doctors listening, just chill out. I’ll go to the doctor. This is about how first thing in the morning, my attention was hijacked and it took me a few minutes and here’s what happened. In the past, I would have immediately dropped what I was doing and gone and logged into my old website and made the change myself.
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but as a business owner, I have been training myself to let my team handle things and shift my attention to the higher level stuff. Because I’ve been trained that if you are working in your business, you cannot work on your business. And so I’ve developed new habits to not respond to tasks that I can pay my VA to do. And so I was sitting on the toilet.
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Okay, I’m just letting you in on the whole picture. I’m sitting on the toilet stressing out because am I gonna ask Andy to do it because he’s the one that maintains the old website, but I haven’t talked to him in a while and blah, blah, blah, blah. Or should I have Coral do it? Like all of this stuff. And my body started feeling, as you might imagine, I was stressed. I was experiencing stress. And because I am not in the habit of feeling stressed first thing in the morning anymore,
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It caught my attention. My body alerted me, hey, hey, hey, pay attention. What’s going on here? And I caught it. I interrupted this habitual reaction to immediately deal with this, and I stopped. And I was like, I am the master, the maker of my time. I am the director of my own attention. Someone I don’t know is responding to a blog I wrote eight years ago.
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about a link in her research that has changed. Thank you, thank you very much. But I do not need to deal with that first thing in the morning. I don’t even have to deal with it at all. I mean, the website’s just kind of there. I don’t invest my time and energy because I don’t get a good return on investment on recipes that I wrote years ago. Like as a new CEO, a little baby business mind that I have, like I have to be careful because there’s a lot of squirrels and I have ADHD.
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And so I’m very careful and attentive to where I place my focus. And so the feelings in my body matched thoughts in my brain that I needed to do something. I needed to fix something. There was a problem. I had to solve it right now, go. But the sensations in my body don’t have an agenda. It’s just my body reporting the state of the union, what’s going on. And so what I have learned is that
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We tend to think that our feelings are facts, right? And that if I feel this way, the thought in your brain matches that feeling. I have to take action. This is a problem. But my body isn’t thinking. My body is just experiencing. And I have learned to notice the sensations of my body because I have a good relationship with my body. I love and care about her. And in general, when I’m feeling tight, stressed,
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anxious depressed or whatever I instead of listening to my brain and the thoughts that are driving this sensation in my body I allow my body to communicate with me directly and any sensation That is not pleasant that does not open my heart that does not make me happy and give me joy I no longer react to it. Like it’s the thought that needs my attention. It’s the sensation that needs my attention and so
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I can see the evolution of my own thought processes, you know, good for me for having an upgrade mindset where I’m not gonna respond to this, I’m going to have my team respond to this. But then the next upgrade, the next iteration of my response, my personality, my chosen habits of how I move about the world, the next response was, this does not even need my attention. This is not anything I need to pay attention to.
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The feeling reminded me that I have a choice. I have a choice how I want to feel. I have a choice what I pay attention to. And so this whole thing happened in less than two minutes because I have cultivated a habit of choosing my emotional state in the morning. And that new habit, interrupted, hijacked, stopped, prevented me from going into the old habit because I am now in the habit
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of believing that I see the world and I act on the world in a much more powerful way when I am in a calm, clear, connected, grounded, safe, curious, positive, emotional state. And what I wanna leave you with is your brain will get you what you want if you tell it what you want. And that is why it is so important to not break
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old habits, but to build new habits. It is the new habit that breaks the old habit. You have to reprogram your mind by setting an intention and checking in with that intention and make that your habit. And the litmus test that I’ve been using in terms of my feelings, and this is really basic, it’s just a thought, an idea for you to try on, but anything that feels good is your truth and anything that doesn’t feel good
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is a lie. And of course, we know that nothing is true. So therefore all the things are true and anything you pay attention to becomes your truth, right? So you can apply this litmus test in that anytime you notice that you’re feeling constricted, stress, depressed, anxious, worried, all of the things that that’s actually telling you that the thoughts in your brain are not your truth. They’re just your old programming.
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and your body’s asking for a reboot and update and upgrade. And even if the content of your thoughts feels urgent and like there’s a problem to be solved, you can relax and tell your brain, I will revisit this issue once I get my emotional state where I want it to be. Because that version of me is the one who thinks powerfully, acts powerfully, and moves into the future instead of just reacting as she always has into the past. And so at some point,
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I may update that link on my website or I may decide to punt it to my team. But when I do take that action, it will be from a place with an open heart where I’m excited to fix that link. I’m excited to handle that instead of feeling stressed and obligated and behind the ball and starting my day in that emotional state that then just perpetuates that through the whole day.
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and applies that emotional filter to everything that comes across my conscious awareness, every problem. I’m looking at it like it’s urgent, action required, decision required. I need to do this right now. And that’s not how I roll anymore. So my first thought for you for today is think about the most important habit that you could adopt is setting an intention for how you wanna feel in the morning and guarding that habit with your life.
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And then the second thing is, if it’s not first thing in the morning, you still have the choice to not respond to the calls that you think are coming from around you, but they’re actually coming from inside the house. The old thought patterns are telling you go, now, do, get, change, fix, figure it out. The call’s coming from inside the house. So no matter what time of day it is, you can stop and pause and breathe and reconnect with
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your intention to exist in a state of power, exist in a state of abundance and ease. You can do that any time of the day.
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All right, thanks for listening. And if you’re a high achieving, coachable woman who is ready to commit to manifesting your best life, and you’re going to need to reduce your alcohol consumption by about 80 % so that alcohol goes back to being a pleasure instead of a soul sucking problem, get in the show notes and click the link and schedule a discovery call with me or my team.