Think It: Chapter 1 -From Rockbottom to Breakthrough

How One Thought Changed My Life

I’ll never forget the first time I heard, “You can change your thoughts.” It was from Louise Hay on The Oprah Winfrey Show. This must have been 2006 or ’07, and I remember thinking, “What is she talking about? How is that even possible?”

I was so unaware at the time, with no interest in or exposure to personal development or the concept of self-help. It wasn’t mainstream popular then, the way it is today. There were no social media #thinkpositive or #MindsetIsEverything hashtags, no inspirational T-shirts. Honestly, I probably found that episode and conversation a bit over my head—and boring—yet somehow, the idea stuck. It nagged at me.

How could I change my thoughts? I wondered. Why would I want to? Didn’t my brain just think thoughts on its own? The whole idea was baffling. It made no sense to me. Maybe I’m just stupid, I remember thinking. Maybe big esoteric ideas like trying to control your mind are for people a lot smarter than me.

At the time, I was a 34 year old stay-at-home mom with infant twin daughters and a five-year-old son. I was married to my high school sweetheart and trying hard not to collapse under the pressure and exhaustion of three little kids. My husband had suddenly grown distant. I was forty pounds heavier than a few years before and hated how I looked. All day, every day, the voice in my head ripped me apart, telling me how fat and gross I was.

Financially, our life was imploding. We’d lost our house to foreclosure the previous year in the collapse of the housing bubble, our car had been repossessed, and we’d just filed for bankruptcy. The unpaid bills were piling up. It felt like life was swallowing us whole. The voice in my head constantly reminded me what a failure I was, insisted there was no hope, and predicted that things would only get worse.

And of course, they did.

In September 2008, I read a text message that blew up my life.

It was from my husband’s mistress, and it ended our marriage in about ten minutes. He was in the shower, soap covering his face, when I turned the water off and told him to, “Get the fuck out.”

He didn’t protest, just got out of the shower, still covered in soap and dripping wet, reached for his clothes and pulled them on while I watched from the hallway, stunned and shaking. I expected him to deny it, say it was all a mistake, that it didn’t mean anything. But he didn’t. He just walked past me, and without a word, went into each of our children's rooms and kissed them goodbye. I was shaking, with my arm pointing to the door, repeating the only words in my head: “Get the fuck out!” He walked to the front door, and before he stepped outside, he turned around to look at me, and threw his wedding ring across the floor in my general direction.

I filed for divorce a week later.

If I thought life was rough before that shower, nothing prepared me for how bad it got after. We hadn’t kept up on bills with his income, so how could I survive without it? What was I thinking? Now I had no income, no savings, no job. Even the bank accounts were in his name. How could I possibly take care of my babies? I felt so trapped and helpless.

And the voice in my head continued to scream at me the way it always did: YOU’RE A FAILURE. YOU DESERVED THIS. THIS WOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU WERE BETTER AT MONEY. IF YOU LOST THE BABY WEIGHT, YOU WOULDN’T HAVE LOST YOUR HUSBAND. NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS TO YOU. And on it droned.

Ever had a voice in your head sound like that? It’s not helpful. It doesn’t inspire you to greatness. It doesn’t give you the energy to get out of bed, or to pick up the pieces of your life, let alone the motivation to start over from scratch.

But something pivotal happened to me a few hours after my husband left. That night, when I lay on the floor crying my eyes out, thinking of all the ways I could never make this work—how I just couldn’t do it alone—I heard a new internal voice. One I’d never heard before. It said… 

“What if you CAN?”

That thought was like being tossed a lifeline on a capsized boat in the middle of an angry sea, and I clung to it ferociously. That tiny thought brought hope and possibility—a shred of positivity that sounded so utterly foreign yet so desperately needed.

Instead of focusing on everything that was going wrong in my life, and all the worst-case scenarios, I started asking myself, “Well, what if I could? What would that look like?” That little positive what if began digging me out of my darkness and opening up ideas which helped me form a plan to reinvent my life.

In all the chaos and darkness that followed in the next several months, Louise Hay’s words kept coming back to me: You can change your thoughts, and your thoughts can change your future.

I still didn’t know if that was true or not. Honestly, I was skeptical. But the possibility it represented haunted me.

I started paying more attention to what my head was telling me, and let’s just say, it was depressing. I was soooo mean to myself—all day, every day. Like, WTF?

I’ll never forget my first conscious experiment to change my thoughts. I had no idea what I was doing or if there was a “right way” to do it, but I figured whatever I tried was better than nothing. I was beginning to see the correlation between my continuous negative self-talk and my real life, and that realization stung. I didn’t want to feel like shit anymore. Something had to change.

So, I went into the bathroom, looked myself in the eye, and said out loud:I am beautiful. I look and feel incredible. I am sexy. I am loved. I am doing a good job. I am a good mom. I am good with money. I am successful.

I looked at my reflection and sobbed with each affirmation. With every single one, that nasty bitch voice in my head tried to scream and argue: YOU ARE NOT BEAUTIFUL, it pointed out. LOOK AT YOU, YOU’RE A MESS. NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE YOU. YOU’RE FAILING AT EVERYTHING.

But I just repeated those damn affirmations louder each time. I showed up in that mirror every morning and every night and told myself all the things I wished I felt, wanted to believe, or dreamed of becoming. And slowly, I started to feel better. I started walking on my lunch breaks and using the apartment gym. When I felt tired and weak, I told myself, I can do it. I am strong. I started putting some effort into my appearance and imagining myself as a boss babe!

Then one day, I was finishing my makeup, about to go out with a friend, and I took one last look in the mirror. Without prompting, I automatically had the thought, for the very first time in my life: Damn girl! You are beautiful. You look sexy tonight! That magical transition from thought to reality had taken place somewhere along the way, and in that moment, I felt beautiful. It was no longer a lie.

I was like… HOLY SHIT!! Did I do that? Did it actually work? I honestly never thought it would. I just wanted to feel better. I never imagined it could genuinely change how I saw myself or how I felt. I was shook.

And then I had an idea: What if I could use this trick to change other things about myself and my life? Maybe I could use it to change my financial situation (that seemed completely insane, btw) or lose weight, or even use it to get a better job. Now I was getting excited!

That began my quest to find the hacks, the simple and easy ways to get my thoughts to start creating a new future. It’s a journey that has completely changed my life, my children’s lives, and the lives of thousands of clients and readers worldwide. And it’s about to change your’s too, if you are willing to do this work. Trust me, that’s not cocky—it’s facts. If you take the advice in this book seriously, do the journal work in each section as you read it, and practice the tools daily, it will change your life forever. Every part of your life, FOREVER.

Think It is one of nine steps I teach every client, and it is by far the most important. It’s the one that will have the most dramatic and near-instant impact on all aspects of your life.

So… are you ready to see what can happen in your life? 

Let’s do this!

**The Publication date for Think It is Feb 3, 2026* But you can pre-order it NOW!

If you’ve been thinking about working with me privately—this is your moment.

I just opened up spots for my brand-new Think It: Private Coaching Experience 8-weeks of 1 on 1 sessions to learn all 7 of my mindset tools from Think It where I’ll customize them for you and your life.

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About the Author: Sarah Centrella is a multi #1 best-selling author, master life coach, executive coach, speaker and the Founder of VIVIAMO.

This work is copyright protected 2025 Centrella Global LLC