Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts

by Jennie Allen

We have bought the lie that we are victims of our thoughts rather than warriors equipped to fight on the front lines of the greatest battle of our generation: the battle for our minds.

The reality is that our emotions are a by-product of something else. Our emotions are a by-product of the way we think.

The average person has more than thirty thousand thoughts per day. Of those, so many are negative that “according to researchers, the vast majority of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct result of a toxic thought life.”

Doubt steals hope. And with no hope, everything that matters doesn’t feel as important anymore.

The danger of toxic thinking is it produces an alternate reality, one in which distorted reasoning actually seems to make sense.

If our toddler is throwing a fit in the grocery store, we correct him, redirect him—yet we have allowed our minds to have outright meltdowns with zero correction.

When we think new thoughts, we physically alter our brains. When we think new thoughts, we make healthier neural connections. When we think new thoughts, we blaze new trails. When we think new thoughts, everything changes for us.