The Danger of Believing Everything We Think
Why We Need to “Mind Our Mind”
by @bethvogt
Mind your manners.
Chances are, we’ve all said those words before.
Maybe we’ve also been reminded to mind our manners.
When we mind our manners, we’re taking extra care to be polite. To remember, as I would tell my kiddos when they were younger, to use their “nice words,” like please and thank you.
But as I sat in in my room the other night fighting against a mental funk, I decided maybe we should say: “Mind your mind.”
Then I wondered how many thoughts filled my mind in a given day. Well, thanks to Google and a 2005 study by the National Science Foundation, I found an answer: The average person has 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day.
Surprised?
Keep reading.
The study determined that 80% of those thousands of thoughts are negative. And 95% percent are the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.
Now my mental funk made more sense. I still didn’t know why I was struggling – I couldn’t pinpoint the exact thought that took me down. But one thing I did know: I’d probably had the same thought on replay for a good while.
Does this scenario sound familiar at all, friends?
We’ve got thousands of thoughts running rampant in our minds during any 24-hour period. And thanks to the research of some unknown scientists, we now know most of those thoughts are both (a) negative and (b) reruns from the day before … and repeat, repeat, repeat, day after day after day.
Truth is, some of us didn’t need a scientific study to tell us that. We wake up, greet the day, and there they are: the same thoughts we dealt with the day before.
Sometimes it is negative self-talk we’ve been saying to ourselves for years. We look in the mirror and we see something we’ve never liked about ourselves. Again. And we let the criticism run for the rest of the day.
Or we hear that voice – the one that never stops talking – saying “You’ll never be good enough” or “I’m so disappointed in you” or “You could have tried harder” and then it recedes into the background noise in your mind – soft, unhealthy mental judgements.
Sometimes it’s just one word.
Stupid.
Ugly.
Unwanted.
Failure.
One word on an endless loop in our mind. We’re not paying attention … but we are listening. Subconsciously, we’re hearing all that negative chatter.
This is where the “mind your mind” part comes in.
Of course, there’s no way we can monitor every single thought we have. Not going to happen. But we can certainly be proactive about creating a healthier mindset.
Decide who is going to be your voice of authority. Oftentimes, we’ve handed this role to critical people who have no right to be controlling our thoughts and actions. We need to choose who gets to have a say in our lives.
Start the day off with a positive affirmation. I like “This is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24). I started saying this with a walking buddy – and now I say it on a daily basis. What’s something uplifting you could say to start your day?
Do a mind-assessment. If you find yourself skidding mentally, take a break and retrace your thoughts. Try to pinpoint if a particular comment or interaction triggered the negative emotions. Reset your mindset with prayer or music or meditation.
What do you do to “mind your mind”?
The Danger of Believing Everything We Think http://bit.ly/2GEjyIf #bepositive #choices
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'The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.' quote by Marcus Aurelius http://bit.ly/2GEjyIf #behappy #choices
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