Think It Chapter 2: Why Thoughts Matter

Mastering Your Mindset: The Predictive Power of Our Thoughts to Constantly Create Positive and Negative Outcomes in Our Lives.

PART ONE 

Understanding Your Mind

Before we can change anything, we need to understand what’s really going on in your head. You can’t shift what you’re not aware of, and most of us are walking around with a constant stream of thoughts that we’ve never questioned. 

Part One lays the foundation for everything you’ll learn in this book. It breaks down the science and psychology behind the Think It tools—why your thoughts are shaping your reality, how your subconscious beliefs are running the show behind the scenes, and what’s actually happening when you spiral or self-sabotage. 

You’ll learn the key concepts of mental offense and defense, and why mindset is about so much more than just thinking positively. This section gives you the awareness you need to finally take control of your thinking, and that’s where real change begins.

It’s important to know that these tools aren’t just for people who want to completely change their life. They’re just as powerful if you already love the life you’ve built. You can be proud of how far you’ve come and still want to grow, evolve, and create the next version of yourself and your success. That’s exactly how I use them. Even though I love my life, I’m always focused on defining what’s next and intentionally building my best-case future, while simultaneously being grateful for what I have. 

So if parts of this book about “changing your life” don’t quite resonate, just think of it as: How do I expand? How can I use this tool to grow and step into my next chapter with intention?

It all Starts with a Thought

 Why Thoughts Matter

Descartes said it best: “I think, therefore I am.” In other words, my thoughts create me. But how does that actually happen? That was the first question I asked myself when I saw this quote on the cover of a journal in the checkout line at HomeGoods many years ago.

As a coach, these are some of the questions I hear from clients every day. Maybe you can relate? 

• Why do I keep sabotaging myself, even when I really want something? 

• I feel stuck in a job or life that doesn’t fulfill me, is there anything I can do to change that?

• How do I figure out what’s next? 

• How do I stop the inner critic and constant self-doubt? 

• I know I have a scarcity mindset—how do I change it? 

• Why am I so overwhelmed, anxious, or exhausted all the time? 

• I want to feel confident and successful, but I don’t know how. 

• How do I stop repeating patterns that keep holding me back?

•  I want to build wealth and peace—but I’m stuck in survival mode.

What do all these questions and statements have in common? They all start with a thought. 

What I’m about to teach you isn't rocket science. It’s not “positive thinking,” or toxic positivity. It’s not New Age feel-good fluff or a cool slogan like "mindset is everything" on a yoga shirt. This is common sense. You’re about to learn a logical process for training your thoughts to start getting what you want and stop getting what you don’t. This is HOW you change your thinking—in the moment—so you can be the person you want to be, living the life you deserve. I call it Mental Fitness, and it’s about to change your entire world.

Just like every other muscle in your body, your mind needs training and regular workouts to stay on track and deliver peak performance. But most people, like I was in 2008, have no idea how to manage the constant stream of conscious and subconscious thoughts running through their head. We all have them—layers of internal voices feeding us doubts, fears, and unhelpful narratives that erode our mental and physical well-being. 

On average, humans have 60,000-80,000 thoughts a day. That’s a lot of noise shaping how we feel, what we believe, and the choices we make—most of it is happening without us even realizing it.

Yet, despite the mind being our most powerful muscle, we were never taught how to train it. In school, we had PE (physical education) but no ME (mental education). Most of us didn’t grow up with parents who knew how to teach mental strength or emotional resilience. If we want to build stronger arms, we know exactly what to do—lift weights, change our diet, or hire a trainer. But when it comes to strengthening the mind, most people are left guessing. It’s not your fault; you weren’t given the tools. But moving forward, you’ll have them.

When I first started trying to learn how to change my thoughts after my husband left, I did what most people do… I went out and bought a few books. I started with the ones Oprah recommended (because she is my guru!)—the Louise Hay, Esther Hicks, and Eckhart Tolle books on the Law of Attraction and the power of our thoughts. And I quickly felt very mentally deficient. I couldn’t understand a thing they were trying to say. It felt like they talked in circles or in a foreign language that my brain couldn’t comprehend or translate into practical application into my life. And no disrespect to any of those amazing thought leaders, they just didn’t speak my language. I needed the concepts broken down in a way I could understand and apply.

I quickly became frustrated because everyone was saying things like, "Just think positive!" or "Change your thoughts, change your life." Or "Positive vibes only." Or “Just get in the flow.” What the fuck is “the flow”? I thought. What does that even mean? The slogans and soundbite quotes were endless, but where was the HOW? 

I kept thinking… 

But HOW do I think positive? Does it mean I just go around all day saying, "You’re fine. Everything’s fine"? Because that wasn’t working; it hadn’t solved any of my problems or changed how I felt.

 It was like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, a surface solution at best.

I wanted REAL answers, real solutions. I wanted to know exactly what to do, and when, so that things in my life could begin to change. And so, I hacked the system. I figured out how our thoughts work on my own by breaking down the process into simple, incremental, tangible steps that anyone can understand and use to get results. I tested them, coached them, lived them, and tracked their results—both for myself and with my clients. My goal has always been to keep this simple, applicable, and results-driven. Even a child can use these tools. I’ve taught all three of my children, starting at a very young age, how to talk to themselves and how to change their thoughts as they’ve gotten older. I’ve witnessed the power it has given them.

And before your inner skeptic kicks in, let me say that I’m confident you’ve already used Think It throughout your life to get things you’ve wanted in the past. Unknowingly, of course—most people don’t understand the process they’ve unconsciously gone through to achieve a goal or get a desired outcome, therefore they struggle to replicate it. But when we stop to analyze any past success, we will see that it always started with a thought, also known as an idea, one you cultivated into a belief and acted upon. After reading this book, you’ll have the formula, which you can cut and paste to get anything you want—or to change anything you don’t want.

Our thoughts create actions, and actions deliver results. This process happens automatically and is continuously creating future outcomes, both good and bad, positive and negative. The process works exactly the same either way. I realized long ago that my negative thoughts looked exactly like my reality. The correlation was impossible to ignore. Everything I’d been telling myself for years kept happening again and again in real life, which, of course, created my belief system.

A few days after my husband left, I took a long, hard look at my life and asked myself a very important question: “How the fuck did I get here?” I was in line at the welfare office, crying behind my sunglasses, rolling my twins’ red stroller back and forth with my foot. My son was sitting quietly next to me as we waited for our number to be called. When it was, I couldn't pull myself together long enough to tell the nice man at the counter that I needed food stamps, so he handed me a box of tissues and asked me to take a seat.

I thought, How is this my life? Before I’d gotten pregnant with the twins, I’d had a great job in corporate sales. We’d just bought our second home—one nicer than the first. And then it all fell apart, until there was nothing left but pieces I was supposed to figure out how to reassemble. And I just couldn’t. I couldn't think straight. Couldn't make sense of my life and what had gotten me to this point.

And that’s when my quest to figure this out began. 

If thoughts create reality, I thought, does that mean I created this?

Ouch. 

That was not a pleasant realization, let me tell you. But I examined it, just for the hell of it. I started retracing some of my most obsessive thoughts over the past five years of my life. I realized I was always thinking about the worst-case scenario. I had even secretly believed that I didn’t deserve my “good life” when I had it. I always worried we’d lose the house, or that I’d lose my job. I worried about money every second of every day, until it made me physically ill. 

I could see now that what I’d worried about, and obsessed over, did actually happen. Repeatedly. That thought was terrifying. I looked at my other negative obsessive thoughts—my body image. Had telling myself I was hideous and that my body was disgusting (which it wasn’t, by the way, but my mind was very corroded) ever help me lose weight or get in shape? Nope. I went down the list. And it didn’t take a genius to see the direct correlation between my years of negative spirals and their exact match in real life.

That was all the evidence I needed, to know that this theory works. And it was enough to scare the living shit out of me! If I’d been so great at manifesting terrible outcomes with my thoughts in the past, maybe I wouldn't be half bad at manifesting better things if I could reverse the formula. I set out to figure out exactly how to do that.

And here we are. 

This process has already been at work in your life, whether you knew it or not. 

Unfortunately most people use this formula backwards. Let me demonstrate what it looks like in reverse. 

Formula in Reverse: When we allow negative thoughts, they grow. When they grow, we’re less motivated to take action. When we don’t act, we feel like crap. When we feel crappy, we’re vulnerable to depression, stagnation, stress, and anxiety. When we feel that way, we focus on it, and it grows even bigger. The bigger it gets, the more we begin to believe it as an absolute, unchangeable fact. When we believe it to be true, we will always manifest it, making it true. It’s a vicious hamster wheel. 

This is how I know you’ve already proven this theory in your own life—not just because I’ve never met anyone who can’t connect the dots when they look back at their past, but because we’ve all experienced self-fulfilling prophecies. And that’s the same basic concept we’re talking about here. 

Take dating, for example. How many times have you seen a friend (or been that person) who consistently dates the same type of "wrong" person? Over time, you begin to form beliefs like, "All men (or women) are jerks!" "There are no more quality single people out there!" "Everyone is a cheater or out for themselves!" "I’m gonna be alone forever." "I’m never going to find the right partner." "I’m not lovable or wanted," etc.

We can see in this example how quickly those beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies. When my inner dialogue is telling me that I’ll never find the type of partner I’m seeking and that everyone in the dating pool fits my previous experience, I can only manifest that same experience in the future. See? It’s kinda crazy right? But don’t worry, you’re gonna learn how to change all that. 

So, if you’ve seen how it can work in the negative, then—like me—let that aha moment of reflection spark a burning desire to learn how to make it work in the positive.

Personal Work

A word about the “Personal Work” in this book. As an elite executive mindset coach and master life coach, I know for a fact that this book will be useless if you do not do the Personal Work journaling prompts. My clients know that I’m a tough coach, but they also know I get them results. They get those results because I do not allow them to skip this work. If they aren’t willing to put in the work, then I’m not willing to work with them. It’s that simple. I want results for them—and for you. Period. Results are what drive everything I do as an author and a coach.  It is the only reason I’ve written this book, or my previous three personal growth books. 

After nearly 15 years of coaching, teaching and writing about my methods, I know that the work will change your life. I have a ridiculous amount of client wins to prove it. Therefore I am begging you… please go get a notepad and a pen… and answer these questions ( if you’d rather have these questions in an actual PDF journal you can get it for free on my website sarahcentrella.com). And don’t move to the next chapter until you’ve answered these questions. This is true for every time you see “Personal Work” throughout this book. This is how you customize everything you’ll learn into practical application in your own life.

Okay? Great, thank you!

Journal Prompts

Take a few quiet moments to list the thoughts that show up most often in your day-to-day life. Write the answers to these questions in your journal or notepad. 

• What do you find yourself constantly worried about?

•  What are you obsessing over or replaying in your mind?

•  What’s been keeping you up at night or draining your energy?

Now dig a little deeper:

•  How long do you think these thoughts have been circulating in your mind?

•  Can you trace them back to a specific moment, memory, or season of your life?

•  How have these thoughts shaped your emotions, your decisions, or the way you show up in your life?

Next, take an honest look at your current reality.

•  In what ways does it reflect the repetitive thoughts above?

•  Can you identify moments in your past when your fears or worries came to fruition?

• Can you identify any repetitive self-fulfilling prophecies in your past?

Finally, reflect on this: 

• Are you beginning to see how your internal dialogue might be writing your external story?

•  How do you feel about that?

It’s important to remember that this exercise is about self-discovery, not shame. You didn’t know what you didn’t know. You did the best you could with the tools you had at the time. So if you’ve uncovered some patterns of negative, self-sabotaging behavior or self-fulfilling prophecies, that just means you’re human. Congratulations—you’re one of us! We’ve all been there. Every one of us has played a role in creating outcomes we didn’t want. That’s human nature.

The amazing news is, now you have the tools to get this process working for you instead of against you.

Now that you understand how powerful your thoughts are in shaping your reality, it’s time to explore the deeper layers beneath those thoughts. Next we’ll uncover how your subconscious beliefs drive your thoughts and actions. By learning where these beliefs come from and how they operate, you’ll gain the clarity needed to start reshaping them in alignment with your goals. Let’s dive into the root of it all: how thoughts become beliefs.

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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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*This is a chapter from my upcoming book Think It. The Publication date for Think It is Feb 26, 2026* and you’ll be able to pre-order it in July of 2025, so be sure you’re subscribed to be notified when it’s available!

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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