Kat Thorne: Welcome back to the Positive Habits podcast. I'm Cat Thorne, your host, and I'm excited today for a solo episode. I cannot believe it has been nearly five years, so five years in August, since I decided to take the step to starting my own mission, helping people create once more positive habit change with the Morning Game Changer. And I was thinking, yesterday about the fact, and I often share this in talks and with people I meet, that I nearly didn't even start this. And I nearly didn't even start this podcast. And I think about all the decisions that I almost didn't make because of one thing. And that's what I want to get into today. Your thoughts. And it's really easy, I think, sometimes to look at somebody and look at their life or their success and think, ⁓ they're so lucky that they have that or that they're experiencing that. And what you don't see very often is the sometimes the war that has gone on for that to have transpired and become what it actually is. And I want to talk today about some of the thoughts that I had before I started this and This Friday, I'm running a masterclass as part of a ladies night with Plunge, which is our mobile ice bath and sauna truck. And we've started doing these mini masterclasses as part of the ladies night. So they're only about 15 minutes. And this week's one is about your passion project or your side hustle or building your own mission or business or whatever that looks like for you. And I've realized over the years how much you have to work with your thoughts. And by the way, this isn't just in terms of business, this is in life in general. Just how powerful your thoughts are and how they can literally transform your life in a positive way and also completely sabotage them, sabotage your life. So some of the thoughts I remember thinking as I was coming out of my job as a CEO. I was thinking, who's even going to care what I've got to listen to? Who's going to pay me? No one's going to pay you to talk about what you want to talk about. No one wants to listen. And here I am, sat here five years later with a podcast that I've been doing every week for two years. I get to travel all around the world, speaking about a topic and a philosophy that I'm so passionate about. that's changed my life and changed thousands of other people's lives. I'm about to build even further now, take this huge next leap of faith, and I'm working through all of those thoughts now as well. And I sometimes think, what if we can't manage to get control of those thoughts? What if we allow those thoughts to keep us? away from our actual potential. So one of the really common thoughts that we have is you don't have time. So people say it all the time. I don't have time to exercise. I don't have time for myself. I don't have time to start my passion project. I don't have time, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things that I've learned to challenge is just, how much time do you need? And actually, When I look back, my business didn't start five years ago. It probably started at least 12 months before that. And it started with a really interesting habit that I'm a big fan of, which is journaling, which is essentially just taking a plain piece of paper and writing your thoughts down. And because of journaling, I was able to work through those thoughts. I was able to notice that those thoughts were not real. Those thoughts weren't true. And actually I had no evidence that those thoughts were true. And in fact, I had evidence that they definitely weren't true. When I looked at other people who were successfully running businesses, who were speaking about topics they were passionate about, who were being paid to travel, who were building an extraordinary life that they love, there was plenty of evidence of it. Okay, not doing exactly what I'm doing or what I wanted to do at the time. but there was definitely far more evidence. And I think the more you train your brain, the more positive thoughts and messages you feed your brain, the more action you take, the more evidence you get. And I remember my very first talk, it was to 100 Norwegians on a yacht in London. And I'd actually spent... the first year of my business, not only people know this, but I'd actually spent the first year of the business trying to do coaching, so one-to-one and group coaching. And that wasn't something that I, at the time, felt was the right thing to do. It was the thing that was kind of being pushed around the internet at the time, you know, become a coach. And so that's the route I went down. And actually, In that year, fortunately, I had some savings which I was using to live off, but I nearly ⁓ lost my house that year because I made £500 in my first year of business. And it was only when I started posting about what I was really interested in, which was speaking to teams, speaking at events. And then I I got a call from my old boss, who's Norwegian, Nils, and he phoned me and he said, I like your positivity stuff on LinkedIn. Do you want to come and do a talk to a hundred Norwegians in London? And I said to him, you're going to pay me? And he said, yeah, I'll pay you. Pay you 500 quid and I'll pay you a train fare. And I thought, you know what? This is it. That's more than I've made in a year. And That one event, that one moment showed me this is it. They loved it. I loved it. I just knew this was the right path. And I've been building that approach ever since. And I think sometimes we don't celebrate things that don't work out. We see them as failures. So I could have, I could have seen that first year of business as, you know, that I'd failed, but actually I learned so much. and I needed to go through that to get to where I am today. And so I'm grateful for that experience. But coming back to thoughts, you know, some of the thoughts that I have even now about my life and about business and relationships, I know that so many of these thoughts are not helping me. They're not adding to my life. They're hindering me and... The one way to get control of them is to write them down. Because when you write them down, there's nowhere for them to go. They can't run around like wild animals in your brain controlling you. all of a sudden have to, you know, you have to sort of look at them and you see how true are these thoughts. So if you are listening to this and there's something in your life that you want, that you want to change, that you want to build, that you want to experience, notice the thoughts you're having around it, write them down and ask yourself how true is this? Because I am absolutely convinced we are not our thoughts. You are not your thoughts. And our thoughts ⁓ have been developed over so much time and have been influenced by so many things. And I honestly feel like when you start to notice your thoughts and not react to them and to get control of them. And the more you feed your brain positivity and things that that feel good and that are aligned to you, the better life gets. It's really amazing. And I'm so grateful that I have learned and continue to learn how to manage those thoughts and that all that is doing now is opening up my life, opening up opportunities. And I really feel like I'm building a life that I love because I no longer at the mercy of my thoughts. So thank you for listening. I hope you have a great day and I will see you on the next episode.