We have between 60,000 and 70,000 thoughts a day, and most of them repeat themselves: things that have already happened and can’t be changed, or worry about a future that hasn’t happened yet. A thought is an action of the brain and of its language. An emotion is an action of the body. When the two sync up, they create a state of being. According to Gili the emotion is the result of the thought and not the other way around, and the way you talk to yourself physically changes the brain, and through it your energy and your life. Thoughts and emotions reach all the way down to the body’s chemistry. Focusing on love and abundance activates the genes responsible for vitality, and negative thoughts do the opposite.
The first thought arrives before we’re aware of it, and it always comes from a place of lack. Free choice, according to Gili, lives in the moment right after it: identify with the thought and go on with it, or stop. When you identify with a thought you give it weight and you become that thought, and anyone walking around with a victim consciousness will draw in situations that confirm it. We have no control over the world outside, only over our own response, so that’s where it’s worth putting our energy. Every event, even the most extreme one, is a reflection of a belief sitting inside you, and the opportunity is to clear it, not to react to it.
The subconscious holds most of the information that actually runs us. It remembers everything from the moment of birth, and it wants to recreate what it already knows, even when that hurts. It works like an advertising algorithm: whatever you’re focused on is what you pull toward you. It also doesn’t understand the word “not,” which is why an affirmation has to be positive, “I’m healthy” and not “I’m not sick.” And the track your thoughts are on before you fall asleep sets the track you wake up on, so Gili recommends not feeding your brain the news and thrillers before bed.
For a stressful thought she offers three questions: is it true, how does it feel in the body, and what would it be like if I had never had this thought at all. Stress is anger plus fear, and both of them weaken when you practice gratitude. Creating reality, for her, isn’t a wish tossed into the air. It’s mental training: be very clear about what you want, set aside a few minutes a day to picture the thing as if it is already happening, and give thanks for it as if it has already taken place. And self-confidence isn’t built out of courses and mantras but out of actions. When you stand behind what you told yourself you would do, you teach your brain that you can be trusted.
Gili distinguishes between sperm consciousness, which is effort and movement in every direction with no guarantee of arriving, and egg consciousness, which is receiving and quiet, where everything comes to me. It has to do with which consciousness you’re connected to, not necessarily with gender. She points out that a war over consciousness is already underway, and that quantum theory says matter behaves differently depending on who is observing it. And the placebo effect shows it in the body: a pill with no active ingredient heals because the expectation that the treatment will work changes the body.
The same thoughts come up all day and you're sure they're yours
You don't really choose every thought that runs through your head. Somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 thoughts pass through us in a single day, and from what Gili lays out here, most of them aren't ours. They're an old memory trying to come back, or worry about something that hasn't happened yet. Who is running that thought, and how do you know whether it belongs to you? The question gets both a scientific backdrop here and an explanation from the Hasidic world. And at least one of them offers a practical answer: stop stating facts and start asking questions.
Questions this episode answers
What's the difference between a thought and an emotion?
How many thoughts does a person have in a day?
I heard about Benjamin Libet's experiment on decisions in the brain. What did he find?
If something you read or heard lately really set you off, it probably touched something real. Indifference, not anger, is the sign that something isn't really connected to you, the way Gili puts it. She also has a practical tip for the moment before you fall asleep: what you feed your brain in those minutes decides how you'll wake up in the morning. And before you hit play on a meditation you found online, it's worth checking who's behind it, because you end up absorbing the energy of the person delivering it, not only the words.
Questions this episode answers
What's her first tip about getting control of my thoughts?
Why should I check who wrote or put out a meditation before I listen to it?
What does the story about the friend and the four daughters teach about looking at anger?
You're right back in the same situation, the same kind of partner, the same fight, the same feeling of "here it is, happening to me again". As Gili presents it, that's no accident. Our subconscious remembers everything from the moment we were born, it's constantly trying to repeat itself, and so, without noticing, we're drawn to situations we already know. Even your least logical reaction in a tense moment belongs to a five- or six-year-old child who is still at the wheel. Once you look at that straight on, you can start changing direction.
Questions this episode answers
What's the difference between the conscious part and the subconscious?
How can a woman who grew up in a violent home find herself in a relationship with a violent man?
Why does it only last a week every time I decide to change, and then fall apart? And how am I supposed to find out what's going on in my subconscious that's causing it?
You're having a conversation with yourself all day long, and you probably don't notice how much of your life it decides. According to Gili, the way you speak to yourself doesn't stay at the level of thought. It physically changes your brain, and through that, everything that happens in your life. You have no control over what happens outside you, only over your own response, and that's where all your energy should go. The insecurity you feel doesn't come from what other people really think of you either. It comes from your own fear of what you think about yourself.
Questions this episode answers
Why do I constantly need other people's approval to feel okay about myself, and why is it never enough?
That thought stressing you out all day, is it even true?
There's one nagging thought that keeps coming back, and it feels like it's simply the truth. Gili Man Wolner says that stress is anger plus fear, and that both of them weaken the moment you choose to focus on something else. She offers an exercise, three simple questions for testing a thought like that, and along with it a short morning practice of gratitude and picturing what you want. The way she sees it, you don't think your way out of being stuck, you move your way out, even without full confidence, and even when it seems like you don't have much to give.
Questions this episode answers
What's the difference between people who succeed and people who fail?
I'm stressed all day by this thought that won't leave me alone. Is it even possible to stop it, and if so, how?
Why am I this stressed all day, and what does that even mean?
You react to the same kind of event over and over, and it feels like life is just happening to you and you have no say in it. Gili takes a different approach: every event, even the hardest one, is a reflection of a belief sitting inside you, and the opportunity is to clear it, not just to react to it. There's no need to wait for life to prove to you that you deserve something good before you believe it. Belief comes before reality, not the other way around. And the way she sees it, this isn't only on the emotional level: she explains that your thoughts and your feelings reach all the way down to the body's chemistry, and affect what actually happens to you.
Questions this episode answers
Something bad just happened to me. How am I supposed to relate to it at all?
Why do I have to prove something to myself before I let myself believe in myself?
Why do I physically feel it in my body when I'm stressed or sad?
It hurts right now. It really hurts, and sometimes it seems as if the world outside has turned as ugly as whatever is going on inside. It is tempting to want to run away from it, but the way Gili sees it, a time like this is exactly when we have to come back to ourselves again and again. Here she takes apart the saying that there is nothing more whole than a broken heart, and in her words the real break is not in what other people did to us, but in realizing that we created this reality ourselves.
Questions this episode answers
What does "there is nothing more whole than a broken heart" mean? Why is it supposedly a good thing that your heart is broken?
You asked politely for somebody to move, and instead of an answer you got "you're hysterical." There's a moment when you're still speaking quietly and politely, and somebody decides anyway that your reaction is the problem, not his behavior. The way Gili Man Wolner sees it, anger is holding a boundary without going outside yourself, while aggression is what creates the distance, and it's exactly the confusion between the two that gets women taken for hysterical when all they're doing is saying no. She invites you to look again at the moment when strangers on the sidelines see what took you a while to understand.
Questions this episode answers
I told him politely to move and he called me hysterical, so what's the difference between sperm consciousness and egg consciousness?
Where did the word "hysteria" come from?
How did they used to treat women who were diagnosed as "hysterical"?
You live as though someone else decides how you'll feel today: the news, a threat, a post that knocks your confidence out from under you. Gili says that's no accident. There's already a war going on over our consciousness, not over territory, and every side, from the United States to China, knows how powerful it is. The reality you experience isn't set only by what happens outside, but by what you believe is happening, exactly like the placebo effect, where belief alone heals the body. Her conclusion: stop letting fear decide for you, and start choosing.
Questions this episode answers
Why can a sugar pill heal me if I think it's real medicine?
Why did the United States want to ban TikTok, and what does China have to do with it?