If My Plate Could Talk: “The Power Of Your Thoughts” (Part Three)

Kaja Sphere welcome to if youf Plate Could Talk. I'm so glad that you decided to show up in our space today. It is December 27th. If you're listening to this in real time, just post the holidays for many people. How's your day? How's your week going? It is always that time for us to really consider what do things look like for you? Rate your week. Didn't get a chance to come into the space on Wednesday because it was Christmas and I took time off to be with my family. So one to ten, where are you?

One meaning it's been rough and it can be rough whether it's a holiday or not. Let's be real. 10 meaning it's been phenomenal and great. Let me give a few caveats. One, if you look very closely in the background, my office is a mess with all the things. Good morning again, Audrey. But it is what it is. It'll get cleaned up some point before the new year. Maybe. Or maybe not. Let me know where you are in the world. I'm repping my Arizona shirt. This was given to me by a dear friend. Arizona is one of my favorite places to go there for a annual conference.

Hello, Northern Minnesota. And I love it. But as you can see, I'm in my spot rating my week, man, this one's hard because it's been some highs and lows. I think if I gave it an average, I would give it a solid seven. I think I would give it a solid seven. Hello, Dallas, and if this is your first time here, I'm Dr. Charisse Johnson. Let me introduce myself. Licensed clinical mental health therapist, mindfulness practitioner and author. Hello, New Jersey. Jersey. And this is our last Friday if your plate could talk.

V. and update your calendar. Moving forward, we are moving to Sundays and I'm excited about it because that means I'll see you on Sunday. I'll see you midweek, and then for those of you that are with me in other platforms and spaces, I will see you on Friday. Jules, I'm sorry that your week is a three, and I hope that some things will happen or you will get whatever you need for that to move its way up. We've been talking about the power of your thoughts, and so I don't want to prolong the intro, but I do want to really get into why that's so important.

I love that we ended the year talking about our thoughts and it's something we'll continue to think about because our thoughts hold so Much power. Power. Let's just jump in, right? What's one thought? If you're willing to share that you've had about yourself recently, you decide where you want to take that. This is our space. What happens in the Cadresphere stays in the Cadre sphere. So you decide if you want to share a powerful thought that you've been having lately or a thought that you're working to challenge.

And I will even do the same for myself. I think a thought that I have been noticing surface that I really need to challenge is if I do what's best for me, it will let other people down. Now, I'm not a people pleaser. Really am not. But I do care about the people in my life. I do care about how my decisions and my choices impact other people. And I think that's a natural part of life, right? Is that we go, oh, this is what I really want. But how does it impact this person and this person and that person?

So that's something that I'm really going to chew on and reflect on through the rest of the year and really look at where that tug of war is. And that's an example of having a thought and then deciding, what is this thought trying to tell me about what I'm feeling? I like that I'm pouring out a lot and not receiving as much. Yeah. Our thoughts give us insight into where we are. Our thoughts give us insight into what we need if we're willing to allow them to come up and be honest and be and own them versus fear them or avoid them.

So it's important for you to really stop and reflect and recognize what keeps coming up for me and not just think, oh, I'm bad for feeling that way. I should be grateful. No, if I'm feeling drained and I'm pouring out more than I'm giving in, how can I change that? Who do I need to be around what might I need to stop, what I might need to shift? I love that. Am I ready to be a better version of myself? Oh, I love that. I was looking at something the other day speaking of thought, and then I'm going to end you or just kind of center us around.

Really. Five really powerful thoughts that I want you to put into your life is whenever we need something, it's always going to come at a cost. Whenever we need something or want something, sometimes one of the same, there will always be a level of cost to it. But that's not a bad thing. That's what makes it meaningful. I love it. My Thoughts. My choices are for me and I choose me. In 2025 I was doing something in another space and I was like me be season 2025 and not from this selfish, I don't care about anybody else but really making sure that you are centering your needs and then you're pouring out from there.

Let me give this caveat before I give you these five core thoughts that I believe are some of the most powerful thoughts that you can have in your mind, in your mindset, in your daily or weekly affirmation work is the power of affirmations. I think affirmations get caught in this woo woo space and sometimes we think, oh that's weird that zen me, that's not my thing. But whether we acknowledge it or not, we are always affirming, confirming right or reaffirming something some thought in our life. We're always confirming, reaffirming right or affirming something in our life.

You could even make that a practice where you sit down and go what do I want to affirm in my life? What am I reaffirming that is helpful? What am I reaffirming or reinforcing that is not helpful in my thought life? And what do I want to confirm and make resolute and profound? Because each of those I won't get into the word etymology right now are all very, very different. But what we think repeatedly, what we ignore repeatedly becomes our truth. So as you continue to wind down the rest of this week, the rest of your year and move forward, I really want you to spend some concentrated time looking at where my thoughts where are my thoughts towards myself?

Where are my thoughts towards others? Where are my thoughts towards my abilities? Where are my thoughts towards my goals? You could come up with a number of different categories do I themes here? What needs to be affirmed and made intentional in my life? What needs to be removed and what do I need to do to help shift the way that I think about myself and better support myself? Just like our emotions, your thoughts are messengers and tell you how to move forward and tell you how to respond. And that is a significant part of being mentally well.

Five thoughts to support your overall mental well being. Number one I am capable of overcoming challenges. I believe that this is something very powerful to say to yourself even when you're not in the midst of a challenge. It is very difficult at times when we're in the midst of a challenge to want to say something like that because we're exhausted, we're overwhelmed, we're overthinking, we're overanalyzing the challenge. But when we preset that mindset and go, I am capable of overcoming challenges, I think that's one of the most powerful thoughts that you can have at the beginning of any week.

That's one of the things that we will be doing as we move to Sundays, is I will give you an affirmation of the week. You choose or decide what you want to do with that. But it will just be something to kind of meditate on, to stand on, to decide. Where does that show up in our lives? But telling ourselves, I am capable of overcoming a challenge before the challenge occurs is a really powerful way to speak to our ability to move through the hard things in life and to remind ourselves, hey, I've been through other difficult moments before.

This isn't the first one. Because sometimes a challenge comes and we are like, oh my goodness, what am I going to do? Which is a natural reaction. But we need to remind ourselves, wait, I've been here before. So you tell me, what do you notice about the quality of your thoughts when life is challenging? Answer that question for me in the chat. What do you notice about the quality of your thoughts? Or you can answer with a reaction button if you don't want to share. You can say hearts if you're like, yeah, I normally do, or whatever other reaction you need to give.

But what are the quality of your thoughts like when you you are struggling and facing a challenge? Second thought. Well, let me give you a minute to write your response before I go into the second one. That way some of you that are taking notes are not like, no, I don't want to share because I'm going to miss something. I see some hearts. So people are kind of navigating and responding. Yeah, thoughts can be scattered. Oh so true. And when I'm challenged, the over analytics sometimes can go all over the place.

I can feel like I'm playing ping pong with my thoughts, trying to figure things out. Quality is poor. That's great. The quality of my thoughts are good. I feel like my thoughts can be solid but scattered and disorganized because I'm trying to figure out where to place them. And I love that everybody said something a little bit different because it also can depend on the nature of the challenge. There are certain challenges that we face and our thoughts remain well. If it's a challenge that we faced over and over, then sometimes our thoughts are more difficult because we're fighting old thoughts.

Especially when it's a challenge that is a trigger and something that We've been through before and we're tired of going through. So there's a lot of context to that. Second powerful thought that I want you to download. Kindness matters both to others and to myself. Kindness matters both to others and myself. Sometimes we do a really great job of being kind to others, and we're not being horrible with ourselves, but we may not be as kind as it would be helpful given the moment, given the situation.

So I want you to consider that the level of kindness that you need is going to depend on the context of. Of your life and what you're going through, and not just the challenges, but sometimes there's a really special kind of kindness that we need right after we come out of a difficult challenge. Let's say, for example, you've had a loved one and they have been going through. You've been watching them go through a difficult time. You've been supporting them, you've been encouraging them. You have shouldered so much trying to be there.

They come out of it and you're like, oh, we got through. We're on the other side. They're happier, they're healthier. And then we can kind of have that lull and we're like, what is. What's kind of wrong with me? You're tired, you've been giving a lot, and you've been pouring a lot. So be kind to yourself as you recalibrate, Be kind to yourself as you recenter, as you reset, as you refuel, as you finally get a chance to rest again, as you get back into a dynamic of, okay, we can breathe again. You've been holding your breath a little bit.

Number three. Rest is not weakness. It is the fuel to my purpose. I felt that. Rest is not weakness. It is the fuel to my purpose. In order for us to do the things that we want to do, that we feel like we need to do, that we'd like to do, that we hope to do mentally, physically, financially, socially, emotionally, and spiritually. We need capacity. We need energy. But that requires that we have an adequate balance of work and rest. Rest is not weakness. It is the fuel to your purpose. I might need to make that a whole live.

You feel me, number four. My life is not a race. There is time for pleasure and reflection. You may remember it's been several months back where I talked about pleasure and how pleasure can get a bad rap depending upon what we've been taught about it, depending upon our nature, depending upon our temperament. But there is purpose in pleasure. There's purpose in making sure that we Have a hint of happiness and that we do things that we find pleasurable instead of things that are just productive. Your life is not a race.

There is time for pleasure and reflection. And some of you may tend to be overly reflective, but still deny yourself of opportunities and spaces to enjoy life. I hope that's something you will be more intentional about. I really want to see you think, consider, and engage in the things that you're like, oh, my gosh, I forgot how much I love doing this. Something I'm going to do before the year end. I'm gonna ride a bike. And you might think, ride a bike like your peloton. No, that's. That's a whole different experience.

When I was younger, I loved riding a bike. There was just something about it. Good morning, Luke. There was something about just getting on it, feeling all the wind, making your legs move as fast as you can, staying balanced. It was. It's just like this incredible piece of nostalgia that I don't do enough. And for some reason, that's just been something I crave that I want to do. And so there's a place here in Charlotte called Freedom park where you can rent a bike and you can ride the bike around the lake or wherever.

And I want you to find those things what brings you pleasure. And I'm not talking about things that you do for other people. Taking care of my family. Nope, nope, that's not that. No. Things that are just for you, that bring you pleasure and that are different than your normal. One of my friends also challenged me to that. She was like, I want you to have fun for the end of the year, and you can't do all the normal things you do for fun, like go get your eyebrows done or go get your nails done. It has to be something different.

I was like, whoa. And that's where the bite came in. But it really forced me to go back and go deep. All right, and number five, my greatest strength. Five power thoughts to lead you into affirming a great year. My greatest strength comes from being my authentic self. Don't change, grow, evolve, but maintain your authenticity. There's something about you. The way you are doing things, the way you do it, the way you think, the way you execute that no one else can accomplish. And so a big part of mental well being is being good with who we are and not beating ourselves up or not aligning with the thoughts that make us feel like, well, I need to be different.

I need to be more this. I need to be more that. You need to be more you. And then you figure out how to take your authenticity and put it into a framework and into a daily system, a daily life pattern and flow that allows you to be authentic, invigorated, fueled, and still feel good about how you're showing up in all the world. All right, let me give you those five thoughts again. Five thoughts to affirm in your mindset, to take in. You decide. Do I like all of them? Do I like one of them? What am I saying to myself?

Number one, I am capable of overcoming challenges. Number two, kindness matters both to others and myself. Number three, I am going to make this an entire life. Rest is not weakness is the fuel to my purpose. Number four, my life is not a race. There is time for pleasure and reflection. And number five, my greatest strength comes from being my authentic self. Take those. Use them. Build on them. Decide if you need to change words around, whatever you need to do to make your own. I'm just getting you started with understanding the kind of things that you can say to yourself and how important that is for your growth.

Again, if your plate could Talk is not going anywhere. We're just moving to a different time. We're moving to Sunday so that I can catch you at the beginning of your week and we can do some focused work on setting ourselves up for the week. We can continue to take a good look at what's on our plate. How are we nourishing ourselves? What needs to shift, setting goals? And I'll give you an affirmation. That'll be Sundays at 6. You'll see the change here in the Cadre app and you'll be able to add it to your calendar and then pay attention as well because we do also have communities that have been set up and so I'm going to get into that a little bit more in this space.

I'll explain more about that in the coming year. But that being said, ease your way through the end of the year if you're listening to this in real time. If you're not, ease your way into the rest of your day or your week. Force is not required in order to create progress. All we need to do is put one foot in front of the other and only pause, but never stop. That being said, have an incredible day. I'm so glad that you chose to come and spend time here. Share this with someone who may be struggling with their thoughts and who may need some encouragement.

Have them go back and listen to all three parts that kind of talk about how we can always rely on our thoughts and how they can be subjective pieces of our information that lead us wrong. And leading up to. Thank you, Dr. Teresa. So I'm leading up to this moment of knowing our thoughts have power and what we say to ourselves is so crucial. Say something good to yourself today and maybe to somebody else. Have a good one.