Creating the Best Version of One’s Self Through Compassionate Inquiry
Part of Justin Thorstad’s continual path to becoming his best self has many roads upon which lessons are developed that he passes on to his coaching students and his real estate agents through his mind shift workshops. Justin relays the importance of compassionate inquiry when it comes to breaking the mold of one’s pre-programmed thinking and becoming one’s best self.
Justin starts with the idea of self-awareness when experiencing emotions. Naturally people want to feel those high emotions of love, joy, happiness and bliss, and no one wants to experience the low emotions such as sadness, worry, fear, doubt, anxiety, loathing and depression. He notes that people even tie up their self-worth in those feelings. For example, he says that when people experience high emotions, they feel good about themselves, but when they experience low emotions, they feel bad about themselves and may even think it’s wrong to feel that way.
People that focus on trying to be positive may think that they wouldn’t be feeling those low emotions if they were better, “enough,” or more deserving. But that’s just not true. Those feelings are a result of people’s conditioned programming that they’ve unconsciously practiced for years, maybe their entire lives.
He notes, “95 percent of the unconscious part of who you are — how you think, feel and behave — is literally a memory. It’s based on familiar experiences of the past.” He says that with 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts running through a person’s mind on any given day, people are on autopilot, always operating from what’s known, what’s familiar. To break that pattern, Justin suggests practicing compassionate inquiry, a tool which he calls his greatest teacher.
The practice involves taking the time to “sit with” those low emotions, such as sadness. He suggests when those low emotions start to take over, people can try to approach their feelings from a place of love and to literally ask themselves why they are feeling this way. “Instead of trying to block those feelings out by trying to be positive, recognize the feeling, sit with it, go a few layers deeper and start to learn more about yourself,” he advises, continuing, “This is where you can shine a light on the dark recesses of your unobserved mind and discover what stands in the way between you and who you desire to be, what you desire to do and what you desire to have.”
While becoming aware of old programming, Justin notes people will become more familiar with it and then recognize it when it happens. When this takes place, people are no longer experiencing it, they are observing it — they can then catch it in the moment and immediately shift it.
“By doing this, you can use your mind as a roadmap to your beautiful future,” he says, adding, “Becoming aware of what’s running in the back of your mind, bringing it into the light and reframing it
is the most direct route possible to creating the personal reality you deserve.” In doing so, Justin says that people are actually changing their personalities — how they think, feel and behave — to become the people they want to be.
