Hi, this is Monique Rhodes. Welcome to the In Your Right Mind Podcast, where we're learning how to be happier by working with our minds.
If you’d like to know more about what I teach, come to iintendtobehappy.com take the quiz, and let’s get you started on the path to being happier.
When Thoughts Spiral
One of my students wrote to me and said she keeps getting stuck in the same negative thoughts. She knows they’re not helpful, but she can’t seem to let them go. She wanted to ask me—how can I stop spiraling?
You’re not alone in this. Everyone gets caught in a loop at some point. We grip tightly onto a thought, a judgment, a story that feels like the only truth.
Our minds are clever—they convince us that our current view is the truth. It feels familiar, and that familiarity gives us a sense of control. But the problem is, it also traps us in that single perspective.
The Real Source of Pain
What I’ve seen again and again—in my own life and in the lives of my students—is that the most painful part of being stuck isn’t the thought itself. It’s our refusal, or sometimes our inability, to consider another way of seeing.
Thoughts like:
- “I’m not good enough.”
- “They don’t care about me.”
- “This is never going to get better.”
They arrive dressed up as truth. But truth is more spacious than that—it has many sides, many textures. And the thoughts that feel the most solid often turn out to be the most fluid once we stop resisting and start getting curious.
Softening Around the Thought
You don’t need to force a thought to disappear, and you don’t need to believe its opposite either. What you can do is soften around it.
Breathe into it and ask yourself,
“Is this the only possible way to see this?”
Notice how your body feels when you believe that thought.
Ask yourself, “What else might be true here?”
Often, what arises isn’t a brand-new belief—it’s a gentle widening of perspective.
It’s that small voice that says,
“Maybe I’m being hard on myself.”
Or, “Maybe they were doing the best they could.”
Or, “This doesn’t have to define me.”
And that small opening? That’s where freedom begins.
Creating Space
We don’t need to eliminate every difficult thought—we just need to hold them with less aggression, less certainty.
The practice is to unhook gently, again and again. Notice when you’ve collapsed into one viewpoint, and invite even a sliver of space back in.
That space doesn’t mean you’ll feel instantly better, but it does mean you’ll stop adding layers of suffering to your pain. You’ll stop reinforcing the same old storyline.
Remember, the mind is a storyteller—and you’re not required to believe every tale it tells.
Real Growth
Real growth happens when we can stay present with our discomfort without believing it defines everything.
You don’t need the perfect thought to replace the painful one.
You just need to remember—you’re allowed to let go of the one that’s hurting you.
And when you do, it’s like cracking open a window in a stale room.
Something fresh begins to move through.
I hope this has been helpful.
Please come and join me in The Happiness Club—we’re doing amazing work there.
Come to MoniqueRhodes.com, click on Courses, and try it out for $1 for your first month.
As always, be kind, take care, and go gently in the world.
