Thought Shopping: How to Change Your Thoughts and Change Your Life

How 90 Days of trying on new thoughts can help you leave behind what doesn't serve you.

Have you ever wanted to feel better, but found yourself thinking it was too hard to even want to feel better? You know what you should be doing. You know taking the walk would help. You know eating better would help. You know applying for the job, launching the business, making the phone call, or simply getting out of bed would probably move your life in the right direction.

That's the frustrating part.

Most people don't lack information. They don't need another podcast, another book, another motivational quote, or another perfectly curated morning routine. We already know what healthy habits look like. We know what we should be doing. What we're often missing is the mental momentum to consistently act on what we really want, and how we want to feel doing it.

For years, I assumed the people who successfully changed their lives simply had more discipline than everyone else. Maybe they were naturally motivated. Maybe they were mentally tougher.

I even believed that about myself for a while. But after trying to understand how my own brain worked, I realized something much bigger was happening beneath the surface. It wasn't motivation, and it certainly wasn't willpower. I had accidentally stumbled onto something that completely changed the trajectory of my life.

How Thought Work Leads To Thought Shopping

It sounds a little strange, I know, but stay with me because it might be one of the most practical things I've ever learned.

Years ago, after my mom passed away, I found one of the last sentences she ever wrote.

"I just wonder if I've done enough yet in my life."

Those words stopped me in my tracks. They haunted me because I started wondering how many people quietly leave this world asking themselves that exact same question. Had they become who they wanted to become? Had they spent years waiting until they felt ready, only to realize they never gave themselves permission to really live? Was this her way of telling me not to end up like them...like, her?

The more I sat with those questions, the more I realized I didn't want to spend my own life wondering what might have happened if I'd simply been brave enough to try.

That single thought didn't magically transform me overnight, but it did change the direction of my attention. Instead of constantly looking for reasons I couldn't move on, I slowly started looking for evidence that maybe I could. That shift led to a different decision. Then another. I started saying yes to opportunities I would have talked myself out of before. I took small actions that didn't feel life changing in the moment, but together they began pulling my life in an entirely different direction.

Looking back, none of the accomplishments that followed happened because I suddenly became extraordinary. They happened because one new thought created one new action. That action became evidence. The evidence made the next empowering thought a little easier to believe, and before I knew it I had created momentum that completely changed my life.

The Transformation

Within ten months, I had lost over 100 pounds, become a certified life coach, built a successful coaching business, spoken on stages, appeared on podcasts and television, and eventually had the privilege of helping women around the world create transformations of their own.

People constantly asked me the same question.

"Jess...what happened to you?"

For a long time, I didn't know how to answer them because I thought the answer was growth. Looking back now, I realize discipline wasn't the beginning of my story.

My thoughts changed at first.

My decisions changed second.

Then my life changed as a result.

Navigating new thoughts until they become beliefs

I realized that simply being curious about new thoughts is the open door to a life changing reality.

The problem with "thought work" for most people is that they try to jump straight into toxic positivity:

"I can do this"

"I will hit that goal!"

"I will make 1 million dollars!"

The point of thought-shopping is simply trying on new thoughts, or even as simple as being curious about them. It's like this:

"What could it feel like if..."

"Wouldn't that be cool if I did do that?"

I stopped accepting every pre-programmed thought my brain handed me. Instead, I started treating thoughts the same way I'd treat clothes in a fitting room. Just because something fits doesn't mean it looks good on me. Just because I've been wearing it for years doesn't mean I have to keep wearing it.

Some of my thoughts were cheap knockoffs I'd picked up from fear. Some were hand-me-downs I'd inherited from other people's expectations. Others were completely worn out, but I'd carried them for so long they felt like part of my identity.

I knew how I wanted to feel. I knew I was searching for meaning after loss.

So I started trying on new thoughts. I intentionally searched for thoughts that stretched me instead of shrinking me, thoughts that challenged the stories I'd been telling myself for years and pulled me to become something more.

At first, I couldn't fully believe those new thoughts.

So I borrowed belief from other people.

I borrowed it from books, podcasts, documentaries, and people who had already built the kind of life I wanted. Eventually, those borrowed thoughts stopped feeling borrowed. They became my own. They changed the decisions I made, those decisions changed my habits, and over time those habits quietly changed who I believed myself to be.

The funny part is, I was never trying to impress anyone. I wasn't chasing a dramatic before-and-after story. Somewhere along the way, I simply started believing that I was worth becoming the woman I'd always knew I could be.

Reverse Engineering The Journey

I observed that my coaching was consistently changing the way my clients thought, behaved, and ultimately lived their lives.

Women were overcoming obstacles they had been stuck on for years. They were taking action, believing in themselves, setting boundaries, launching businesses, losing weight, improving relationships, and creating lives they genuinely loved. I knew I was good at what I did, and I knew I had developed a process, even if I couldn't fully explain it yet.

But simply saying, "It works because mindset matters," wasn't enough for me.

I wanted to understand why it worked.

Why were people creating lasting change instead of temporary motivation? What was actually happening inside our brains that made these transformations stick?

The more I coached, the more curious I became.

Then something unexpected happened

While paying closer attention to my own behavioral patterns, I was diagnosed with ADHD at 32 years old. Suddenly, decades of my life started making sense. My tendency to hyperfocus. The way I learned. The way I solved problems. The way I could become completely consumed by a question until I found the answer. Instead of feeling discouraged by the diagnosis, it became one of the greatest gifts I've ever received because it gave me a new lens through which to understand myself.

More importantly, it fueled an obsession.

I wanted to know why my brain had changed so dramatically. Why had I been able to lose 100 pounds? Why had I gone from grieving, directionless, and overwhelmed to building a successful business and coaching women around the world? Why had one decision led to another, and another, until my entire life looked different? And why were my clients experiencing similar breakthroughs by applying many of the same principles?

So I did what any hyper-focused ADHD woman would do.

I reverse engineered my own transformation.

I went back through journals, calendars, old routines, photos, podcasts, books, habits, milestones, and every major decision I had made over those years. I wanted to know what happened first.

Which thoughts produced which actions?

Which actions created momentum?

Which habits became automatic?

Which beliefs quietly disappeared along the way?

Then I dove headfirst into neuroscience, behavioral psychology, habit formation, and neuroplasticity. I wanted to understand what had actually happened inside my brain as I focused on thought-work.

Somewhere between roughly a million neuroscience books, research articles, and more late nights than I'd care to admit, everything finally started clicking.

I realized I hadn't simply become "more motivated." I had unintentionally built an entirely new operating system for my brain.

Looking back, it all seemed so obvious, but living through it, I never noticed it happening one thought at a time.

That's when everything came full circle.

The science: It takes 90-256 some odd days to create a new neural pathway as powerful as a smoking habit. That, along with 10,000 micro-actions a day.

What I had accidentally done for myself was habitual thought-work that actually rewired my brain.

I finally had the science to explain the transformation I'd been witnessing for years. An answer for women like me who needed to know WHY this transformation would work, and stick.

It starts with curiousity, then thought-shopping, then re-working those thoughts. Those thoughts by nature, lead us to take action. Whether its thinking the thought, writing the thought, reading about it, vision boarding it, or even watching a movie that inspires it...each action solidifies that new-thought into an eventual belief.

Those beliefs are what we build our new lives from.

In order to create real results I needed a repeatable process. A way to intentionally build a sustainable transformation instead of waiting and hoping life would somehow change on its own.

That's how 90 TO NEW was born. My flagship coaching program that helps women who feel like they're meant for more, answer the call. It's guided and intentional thought-work that leads you purposefully into the direction of your dreams.

It provides accountability and requires action. Complete with a curriculum and structured goal process.

After all, I'm not a fairy. I'm a coach.

And it's my job to teach people that once you understand how your brain creates lasting change, you stop relying on motivation, inspiring quotes, and permission.

Only then can you start living on your own, impossibly ambitious terms.

Love always,

Jess