You are currently viewing Ladder Thoughts

Ladder Thoughts

  • Post author:
  • Post category:tools

 Hi friend.

How are you today? And I mean it.  How are you, girl?

If no one else told you today, I am thinking of you and I’m sending you all my love through the interwebs. For real.

Let’s talk about laddering our thoughts. Sometimes we call this building a bridge or using stepping stones. Whatever visual you like, use it.

I’ll back up a bit. We have thousands of thoughts every day. When we take time to identify some of these we can put them into The Self- Coaching Model.

If you aren’t familiar with The Model, click here and then come back.

We always start with the thoughts that our brain is offering us. This creates our unintentional model, or a snapshot of where we are now.

Once we have explored this (and sometimes this takes a long time, and that’s ok. No rush to change anything, ever.) we often want to create an intentional model. This is where we think purposefully about what thoughts, feelings, actions and results we want.

Here is an example:

Unintentional model

C: 6 weeks postpartum body

T: I hate my body

F: disgusted

A: don’t buy clothes that fit, focus on the scale and my flaws, don’t eat well or exercise

R: I hate my body and find all the evidence to continue hating it.

You might recognize that this model is not serving you, and you might want to change it.

So we can create a dream intentional model

C: 6 weeks postpartum body

T: I love my body

F: confidence

A: exercise, eat well, buy clothes that fit

R: I love and take care of my body

This is where a lot of people get stuck because they want to jump straight to a nicer, happier more positive thought so they can feel better. Things like mantras and affirmations sometimes come in. Which can be great but often they don’t work because your brain will not believe them yet. It’s too far to jump right away.

So we slow it down. We use ladder thoughts one at a time to work our way to that intentional model.

We start exactly where we are, and then just take one baby step to a thought that feels believable and slightly better than the one we are currently thinking.

Once we have practiced that one enough, we can reach for the next and so on.

We can choose any thoughts we want. I’ll continue with our example. She could try on:

My mom loves my body just as it is.

My friends love me no matter what I look like.

I can still do everything I need to in this body.

Maybe there is nothing wrong with my body.

My body looks the way it is supposed to look.

I will focus on what my body can do instead of what it looks like.

I am the best one to take care of myself.

I can take care of my body even when I don’t feel like it.

I want to be a good example for my children.

There are also some great modifiers you can try on to any situation. I will keep going with this example.

I notice I keep thinking the thought “I hate my body” and that’s ok.

I’m becoming a person who…likes her body or doesn’t hate her body

It’s possible that…

I’m open to the idea that… I could love my body

I could be wrong about…   what could you insert here? This is a really great exercise to wiggle thoughts loose.  Perhaps our example could be wrong that she will always hate her body.

I will someday…

Also, take some time to neutralize your thought. “I hate my body.” Becomes “I have a body.”

Try these on and create strategies for breaking down some of those thoughts you may have believed for a long time.  If you need a little extra help or you have questions, please reach out or sign up for a free mini session.

Keep moving towards your goals and I know you will get there. 

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.