The concept of the "weeds and wheat" parable is explored as a metaphor for the thoughts that shape our lives. Just as wheat represents positive, growth-driven thoughts that lead to success and fulfillment, weeds symbolize negative self-talk and limiting beliefs that hold us back. By recognizing these mental patterns, individuals can work toward eliminating negative thoughts and reinforcing positive ones, ultimately fostering a healthier mindset and personal growth.

The importance of mindset in achieving success is highlighted, not just in financial terms but in overall well-being. Practical steps such as writing down positive thoughts, recognizing negative patterns, and utilizing Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques are suggested to help reprogram the subconscious mind. By consciously nurturing fruitful thoughts and removing the mental "weeds," individuals can cultivate a life filled with purpose, joy, and meaningful relationships.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:04 – The Parable of the Weeds and Wheat

01:46 – The Battle of Thoughts

03:41 – Self-Reflection & Overcoming Negative Thoughts

05:44 – Mindset Shift: Writing Down Positives

07:39 – The Fruits of the Spirit and Mental Clarity

10:50 – Tactical Psychology and Reprogramming the Mind

13:21 – Final Thoughts & Next Steps

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right. So over the weekend, uh, was that St. Andrews and Arthur taught about, um, the Sower, you know, parable. I think everybody's most people are familiar with the search. So are parable about the guys throwing the seeds down. Some fall in the path, some fall on the rocks and fall in the thorns, that whole deal. However, he preached on these, the parable that follows right after it, which is basically talking about how, uh even in the good field, uh where the wheat was started to grow up. Some of the weeds were there and they started growing as well. And his, his take on it was, you know, there are some really great Christians, bad Christians, and we kind of have to deal with that type of thing. And from his vantage point, they were really good preachers and there were some preachers who weren't very great. Um, you. And he said, the, the way you can tell the difference between the good and the bad is what produces fruit. Um, and this case fruit of the spirit. So it worked out really well. I thought it was a great analogy. That was really worked really well with what he was going for. Um, however, I also kind of took it as the, uh, as a function of how our mind works. So when you start looking at, um, we start looking at the way your mind works and the thoughts that come in, um. You're going to have thoughts that are going to drive you in the right direction. They're going drive you towards their purpose. They're gonna drive you. Function. They're to drive me towards the things that make life and quality of life. legacy and function structure better, right? They're the things are going to be, you know, the things you do that are kind, you know forgiving the things that are, you know, beneficial, the things that, you know, make you get, they get you closer to your goals, right. Um, your positive functional goals.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:46] And then you're gonna have the thoughts that push you away from those goals, the things that inhibit you from getting there, the ideas of, you know, you're not good enough or, you know, what makes you think you can do that or you're unworthy or, You know, the if onlys. You know, this kind of big kind of one of, you know, if only this or if only that then, then I could do this or, you know, the world's against me because I'm quite black woman, male, whatever. Um, and so those are the things that are keeping me from getting where I want to go. Those thoughts are the weeds that are choking out the greatness of what you can actually achieve and actually become. And the thing is, is that A lot of people are like, well, you know, if I get rid of all of those negative thoughts, I'm not going to turn into a billionaire tomorrow. No, you're not. Uh, well maybe you were, I don't know. Uh, but the chance that your life can grow from where it is now and become better is highly possible. Um, you people look at that too much. They, they, they look at success too much as a dollar value and dollar values are definitely a measure of success. Um, however, you, you look at the people who, you know, the old expression, you. A person who's healthy has a million desires and a million wants the person who is sick and unhealthy only has one, you know, just wants to get the health back. Um, if we start viewing success outside of the dollar function, I think you can start to realize that there's a lot of success function that you can do when you remove some of these, these negative or, you know, or not functional, not, not productive thoughts. Uh, we start working out the, the inadequacies. as we start working out the. You know, like I said, the, I'm not good enough. So I'm, not worthy is the, if only sort of thing we start. We stopped listening to those as much. And we start listening to the other side of us more, uh, we can strengthen our relationships with our friends. We can strengthen the relationships with their families. Um, we could strengthen the, uh.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:41] You know we can, we, can strengthen ourselves. We can start deciding that we like ourselves and you know, Oh my gosh, maybe even love ourselves a little bit. Um, that's where a lot, I think this is, this is where it struck for me. was. You know, we in the fertile landscape that is your mind, right? You've got all these really positive thoughts of like, you can do this. These little whispers of you can do this and like, what if we just change this one thing or what if we ate a little less or what? If we, you know, worked out a little more, what? If we slept a little bit more, whatever, you know, what, if we took a breath and listened to our kids a little bit more or, you know, any of those things, you know, you If maybe we could start turning around at me and like, Hey, maybe the problem in the situation is me, you know, maybe there's work I can do on me that makes me a better person that would solve a lot of the problems that are around me. Cause you know you're the constant and all your problems, you know, if we start kind of diving into that a little bit more, we'd be a little more productive and things would get a little better. You know, so that's, that's kind of where I took it. So. The thing that, you know, and this is one of the things we do with the coaching stuff is we always give people tasks. I'm going to give you a task, um, start thinking of all of the great things you say about yourself and write them down. Write down the things that you think are great about yourself that you say these things and you think these things even for a fleeting second You know, oh, uh, you say something people laughing. Oh, i'm kind of funny write that down You know all those sort of things Don't write them down but recognize The weed thoughts the uh, that's committee. We're going to change that term The the negative thoughts the the ones that are choking out those those positive thoughts Just kind of notate don't write them down because I don't want to I don' t want to install that that function But just notate like if you're like, oh, I'm kind of funny and then you're right It's like well at certain times.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:44] And you know, if it's only with these group of people and you know what Market downs like I had, you know two or three negative thoughts with it and start trying to recognize You know how much Your positive thoughts are being choked out by the negative thoughts that you are either allowing or that are just popping in your head. Uh, regardless, uh, that's going to be something that, you know, just as a reckoning, recognition thing, just as a, you know, where am I sitting? Like taking, taking account or, you know, uh taking inventory, if you will, of the way your mind is thinking. How many of my thoughts are positive and how my thoughts are negative, right? The reason I want you to write down the positive thoughts is because actively writing them down. Instills them stronger in your body. So if you think positive thoughts about yourself, you write them down you focus on the positive stuff You will get more of that That's one of the things that you got. It's part of the programming. So self self programming The thing is is that the the negative function are That is programming as well whether you are programmed to give it to yourself whether somebody else gave you that Uh, society or you've just decided those things as an assumption of whatever function that's, that's gonna be one of those things when we talk about personal development, he starts about mindset. You start talking about, you know, the, the thoughts we have that do drive our behaviors, that drive our actions, that become who we are. Uh, this is, this isn't the very core of what we're talking about. Um, this was why this, uh, this parable was so like, huh, that makes a whole lot of sense to me. It's those thoughts. It's that, it's that internal function is the, you know, how many good proper fruit producing thoughts do we have that would cause us to be happy and cause us, to be more joyful and cause us to, to more loving and kind. And, you go through, run through the fruits of the spirit.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:39] You know, those are the, yeah. Cause it's one of those things where while it's a Christian biblical function, you run through, the fruit of the spirit and you're like, would it be better if your life had more of this, regardless of what religion you are, and you like, probably that sounds you know. Sounds pretty happy. Go look them up. I want you to look them all up so you can kind of see all of them at once. Um, because that's a, that's pretty solid plan. And if we can start getting to the point where it's going to start kind of, you know, moving you in the right directions. If we start, sorry, I'm reading the comments. If you start moving in that in the right direction, all of a sudden we start filtering out the weeds and we start feeding the weeds. And so we get more of that fruit. And so that's one of those big things that if we can start trying to recognize what's the most important thing we can do for ourselves and it's, you know, pull the weeds out, right? Like find the negative thoughts we're always having. See, here's the thing. This is an NLP thing. When we find the thoughts that we're always having? Those are limiting beliefs. When we find the things, the negative thoughts that are there a lot, but they're not there all the time. We call those, um, we call those parts. And so you can go through and you can like selectively peel those out and yeah, pull them apart. So thanks, uh, Jason. So the fruits of the spirit, you know, you can look these up and read through them, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, regardless, if you're Christian or not, those sound pretty solid. So, you, if those are the fruits that you're trying to give to your family, to your friends, and to the world. And then the weeds that are there, choking the thoughts that are choking those things out, recognize those things.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:10] And if you can start kind of peeling those, those thoughts out and maybe condensing them into, man, I'm always thinking these things, like I think about this, you know, what, the way I look at my wife or my husband or my kids or my job, or when people make me mad, like here are the things I have these thoughts all the time. We can start going through. And this is what we do. Like I said, in NLP, we go through and we recode that. So in your subconscious so that we can have either pull it out or we change it and so it's no longer creating the negative thoughts and negative emotions. It's either gone or it's helping to create more positive function. So, you know, these are the things that we can start trying to pulling together, but you have to be cognizant of it. You have to Be aware of what's going on. And so if you just kind of start thinking of the thoughts, what most of you are going to find is there's a lot more negative thoughts than there are positive thoughts. In fact, you might have a positive thought and then immediately afterwards, you're just hammered or rained down off. a bunch of negative thoughts. So that's the thing that we can start to change those. If you pull those weeds out, those thoughts that are around the positive thoughts, and you only have the positive thoughts left, tell me that's not going to change you as a person. And tell me, that's not going change you, as a personal doing more beneficial, more positive function. That's the whole point. When we talk about mindset, this is the exact thing we're talking about is removing the negative functions and then feeding the positive functions. So we get more fruit, we get more benefit, we get more function. off of those positive thoughts and positive functions. So that's kind of where a lot of this isn't, it's just, you know, that parable was, again, this is the parable that's directly after the Sower one. This is the one that, you talk about, and I was like, man, that makes so much sense from a mental space.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:50] So take a look at that, kind of take an inventory of, you know what happens when you have positive thoughts about yourself or positive thoughts about your family or positive thought about your career. Like how quickly does your brain then throw out tons of negative function immediately? Start trying to take a ticket inventory of that and be like, those are the weeds. We got to start pulling out. That's what the coaching and I'll pay coaching to stuff does. You can do that on your own, but it's really, really hard. The end up coaching stuff uses it's like, I refer to it as tactical psychology, um, all the great tools and everything from young and you know, Freud and you know, uh, PJ and all those guys, like, you know all those little pieces were put together and we're like, huh, here's your script, read this script and you can literally reprogram the subconscious mind. to get rid of some of these weeds and these negative thoughts. But the thing about that one is once you start to recognize, once you've started to become conscious of how your brain will throw up something positive, then immediately just shower down negative negativity on it, is we can start recognizing that we can started doing something about it. Because this is again, an LP thing. Lots of my mental stuff can come from LP stuff. So if I don't say, just assume that's where it came from. That programming that triggered programming is what's holding lots of people where they are. And so learning to deprogram or unprogram or reprogram, however you want to look at it, uh, is going to get that set. But once we become, so when you first have something happening to you that you don't know what's going on, we refer to that as the unconscious, uh competence. So you don' know it's there or I'm sorry, unconscious incompetence. You don't, you don''t know what you don's know.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:23] And so you can't do anything about the things you don ''t know. But once somebody points it out to you, you can go, Oh, all right. Now I see it. but I don't know what to do about it. That's the conscious incompetence. And so once I pointed this out to you and you're like, you know what? Yeah, like whenever I have something positive happen, I immediately just shower myself with negativity to like drowned it out. Maybe not as happy or whatever. Like, you know, just so you got to keep yourself in line. Oh, that's not humility. You got to get back over here. We're thinking at least, you 60% negative about yourself. Like once we start recognizing that then we can be like, all right, I see this. Now, what do I do about it? Now, my recommendation to you is to find an NLP coach and walk through how you're programming and reset your programming. That would be my recommendation too. Therapy is an option. From what I've seen, it just takes a lot longer. But those would be the things that I would start recognizing in yourself. If you can start recognizing that this is a situation that happens to you, because it definitely happens to me, if it's something you recognize in yourself, now we can start working on it.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:21] You can start doing something about it. But start thinking about that. Start thinking about the weeds or the negative thoughts that you have. that surround those positive thoughts, positive feelings that you have as well. Because I think if you can start recognizing that contrast, now we can start doing something about it. So anyway, if you guys have any other questions, just have questions at chalmerswellness.com. Um, if guys notice this stuff and you're like, I'd like to look into doing something else about that. DM me, call the office pillars of wellness.com, um, and we can start trying to figure out, you know, a way to matching you with, you know, an NLP coach that'll kind of help you with that. As we've been going through the master prac of Hundreds of hours with us now. Uh, we've got lots of practitioners that we, we trust and we work with. So, um, If you guys have any questions to this up questions@chalmerswellness.com or drop in the comments. Thanks for your time

As always if you have any questions, please send them to Questions@ChalmersWellness.com

Check out Chalmers Pillarsofwellness.com for Wellness updates! And ask me any questions you have at questions@chalmerswellness.com. I answer all of them and look forward to hearing from you.

The Chalmers Wellness Stubstack just launched. Comment, Like, and Interact with other people on their wellness journey. Communities can make a difference.     DrChalmers.substack.com

Dr. Matt Chalmers

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only. Before taking any action based on this information you should first consult with your physician or health care provider. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions regarding a medical condition, your health, or wellness