The Power of Your Thoughts

For decades, I never truly understood the absolute power of my thoughts.

Oh, how I wish I knew what I know now when I was younger.

Our brain is quite the amazing organ.

Did you know that we actually have about 60,000 thoughts a day! Yes! 60,000!

And so many of those thoughts do not serve us well.

We often let the thoughts we have run and rule our lives and determine how we feel about so many things.

Isaiah 26:3 says “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”

The reality is that our thoughts are giving us the results that we are seeing in our life.

 

You Can Change Your Thoughts

It is shocking to really think how the power of our thoughts affect our life on a daily basis.

Fortunately, we have the ability to create the life we want and it starts with our thoughts.

We must begin by learning to take every thought captive in order to see the change by transforming our minds.

This brain of ours can truly retrain our minds and our thinking.

Our brain primarily wants three things:

• To seek pleasure
• Avoid pain
• To spend as little energy as possible

The easiest way to do that is to keep thinking the same thoughts over and over, instead of creating new ones.

Our subconscious part of our brain reaches for things that are the least difficult to process.

Most of the time, we are not even consciously aware that this is happening.

When we choose things that are not challenging, we get a hit of dopamine, which is the ‘feel good’ hormone.

We feel good about being comfortable and playing it safe.

Who doesn’t want life to be easy?

However, we need to be willing to sit in discomfort when we set out to pursue all the things we desire to change and accomplish in our lives.

We need to decide ahead of time instead of living on a whim in order to create the results that we want to create in our life.

Change your Results

There are steps that we can take to retrain our mind to think ways that we have not thought before.

We need to learn how to believe new things for ourselves.

This is a concept that seems overly simple, however, this is something that has to be practiced.

If it is not, it will not work.

Just because we think a thought a few times, or say a mantra, doesn’t mean it will manifest in our life.

I promise you, everything will change if you pay attention to what is going on in your mind.

Let’s Start Practicing

Sometimes we get to a place where we ask our selves, “How did I get here?”

We need to clean out our thought closet and find out what we are holding onto that we shouldn’t be.

We need to take back control of what we are thinking so we can take back the life we want to live.

We need to remember to TAKE EVERY THOUGHT CAPTIVE to the obedience of Christ.

TRUTH: Our thoughts become our habits which become our life.

A more complex way to say this is our thoughts become our feelings which become our actions which become our results.

Some of us have grown up hearing words that our parents or siblings would say over and over again.

“Life is so difficult.”

“We will always struggle financially, that’s just the way it is.”

“We will never be able to live the way your friends do.”

“You can’t trust anybody.”

What feelings did you feel when you heard things like that?

Maybe……hopelessness, fear?

If you are repeating those words and thinking those thoughts, you may be feeling hopeless or fearful. This will keep you from taking action, which will result in life being difficult, struggling financially, etc. etc.

Our Thoughts Are Not Our Circumstances

We tend to think our thoughts are our circumstances. This is a huge mistake we make.

Think of a thought that has not been serving you well. Just one thought.

For instance, look at the model below.

Circumstance – My house is cluttered.

Thought – I will never get this house organized.

Feeling – Overwhelm, Tired, Depressed

Action – We do nothing, we scroll FB, we watch Netflix, we sleep, we shop

Results – We just proved the thought about our circumstance to be right.

What would have been a better thought to have in this circumstance?

Thought –

• Today is a great opportunity for me to get organized, or
• I am so blessed to have what I have, or
• What an honor it is to have a home to take care of.

Feeling – Empowered, thankful, excited

Action – You get organized, you start the process because you feel empowered.

Result – Your house gets organized.

Remember, the circumstances are just the facts.

The Power Of Our Thoughts in Relationships

Think about this in relationship terms.

So often we feel we are victim to our circumstances or a certain relationship.

“That person is just hard to get along with” is a thought, not a circumstance.

Can we prove in a court of law that they are hard to get along with?

Is it a fact like the sky is blue, the floor is green, I live in a house, I have a son?

No, it is not a fact. It is a thought.

Unfortunately, because our brains look for ways to prove our thoughts, guess what? We will always find things that make our thoughts true.

Freedom comes when you realize that you can keep the same circumstance and decide to change your thoughts about it.

You can decide how you want to think about them.

For those of you with teenagers, you can understand this next example of my own.

Communication with our teens can sometimes be very challenging.

A few years ago, I felt that it was nearly impossible to have a conversation with one of my sons.

Circumstance – My son and I had a conversation

Thought – I cannot say anything to him without us arguing.

Feeling – Brokenhearted, sad, defeated

Action – Stopped communicating

Result – Our relationship became distant and I cried a lot

I wanted so desperately to love my son better. I knew I had to change my thoughts about our conversations.

My thought became “I am so grateful that my little boy is growing into an adult and is learning how to communicate better.”

Feeling – Hope, grace towards him, humility

Action – I began looking at him as my son who is learning how to navigate his emotions as he grows and matures.

Result – We actually began having good, long conversations without ever raising our tones or walking away hurt

It was AMAZING!! Our relationship changed as I changed my thoughts about it.

Now, it did not happen overnight as he was used to me responding in a certain way.

It took some time for him to trust my responses and to realize I was truly showing up differently.

Your thoughts become the results of your life.

We can change our feelings about most anything in our life by what we choose to think about it.

I know, it’s crazy when you think about it.

You can choose to believe new things for yourself.

You can retrain your brain to think in ways that it hasn’t before.

Take every thought CAPTIVE and decide what to do with it!

Take some time today to examine your thoughts in an area of your life that you might be having difficulty in.

What result might be different in your life if you choose to change your thoughts about it?

Let me know in the comments below!