How Choosing the Right Thoughts Can Change Your Life
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Frank Outlaw
May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing to you,
O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
Psalm 19:14
Go to any metropolitan city in the world—and even some not so metropolitan—and you will inevitably see someone walking down the street talking to themselves. Your tendency, like ours, is probably to pity them for being disturbed as you watch their one-sided conversation out of the corner of your eye. The irony is that we all carry on conversations with ourselves all the time—just not usually out loud. Sometimes we may not even realize we are doing it. But whether we are aware of it or not, we talk to ourselves all day every day through the thoughts we allow to consume our minds.
Even if you have never keyed into them, your conscious and subconscious thoughts are your constant companions. They drive and form your every waking moment. How you choose to direct your thoughts will ultimately define your life. As James Allen wrote in the classic work on this topic, As a Man Thinketh:
Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the Divine Perfection; by the abuse and wrong application of thought, he descends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master.1
You are made or unmade by your thoughts. Day after day, month after month, year after year, they create every condition of your life, so much so that situations and circumstances you perceive as happening to you are usually happening because of you, in one way or another. That is a tough pill to swallow, isn’t it? No matter what the current state of your life is, your cumulative thoughts have largely landed you there. And every day they either keep you where you are, pull you backward, or propel you into a better future.
The good news is that you get to choose whether what goes on in your head works for you or against you. You have the capacity to maximize the thoughts that are beneficial to your health, your success, your relationships, your faith, and every other area of your life and to disregard those that could keep you from attaining the full measure of what God has for you. This powerful reality has been co-opted and skewed in the past by nonbiblical thinkers, but, in its original form, it was God’s idea. He not only gives us the power to control our thoughts and to use them to cooperate with his plan for us but also tells us to do just that, as we will see later in this chapter.
Your dominating thoughts create your reality. How? First, they fashion your beliefs. Valid or not, those beliefs shape your attitudes about yourself and the world around you. Your attitudes create your feelings, and your feelings drive the actions you take in every area of your life.2 The way you see yourself and the world around you is an outgrowth of what goes on in your mind. Everything you choose to do or not do, say or not say, starts with the seed of thought. As a result, getting a handle on the voice no one hears but you is nonnegotiable when it comes to maximizing your mental health and stepping into the new you. Cooperate with God in changing the voice in your head, and your whole life will reflect the change.
Growing the Good
Think again about the idea of sowing and reaping. As we have discussed, your harvest in life will be the result of the type and quality of the seeds you plant in every area. Your mind is no exception. Each one of your thoughts is a seed that will, eventually, reap a harvest. What kind of harvest that will be is determined by the kind of seeds you sow. The very life you live is the bounty of your thoughts, its makeup completely determined by what you choose to plant in your mind. Along these lines, James Allen went on to write the following:
Man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands, with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought-forces and mind elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny.3
The thoughts you think act as instructions to your brain; as soon as they come through, your brain goes to work to turn them into reality. Or in keeping with the analogy, when you plant seeds of thought—no matter what kind of seeds they are—your brain gets busy producing a corresponding crop. Your subconscious mind can’t differentiate between useful seeds and “weed-seeds” or between what is true and beneficial to you and what is not. It simply listens to the thoughts running around in your head, takes them at face value, and begins the process of growing them. That being the case, you need to step back and think about what you are saying to yourself and make sure you are using words that will reap a harvest of peace, joy, and fulfillment rather than the opposite.
There are three main areas of life where your thoughts produce an obvious, measurable return: your personal accomplishments, your relationships, and your health. Let’s look at how each one of these areas is inextricably tied to what you say when you talk to yourself.
Your Thoughts and Your Personal Accomplishments
Every accomplishment in your life—whether it is how well you do in school, what level you hit in your professional life, or how you manage your household—is directly linked to how you feel about yourself, to whether you think you are capable and worthy of living life at the highest level. And what drives your evaluation of your abilities and worth? What you say about yourself when you talk to yourself or, as author Stephen Covey likes to put it, the mental script you operate from.4
Your mental script has been developing since the day you were born. It began with what your parents said to you. If your parents made comments that led you to believe you weren’t smart enough, cute enough, or good enough, those hurtful words and the emotions that accompanied them started setting the foundation for how you see yourself. Along the way, friends, teachers, and personal experiences built on that foundation, shaping how you think about yourself and thereby shaping what you think you can do and be in this world. What you believe about yourself determines how you feel about yourself, how you feel about yourself dictates your daily actions, and your daily actions added up over time determine your level of accomplishment in the areas of life that are important to you.
When you wake up to this reality, you can begin to filter the contents of your mental script through the sieve of truth, keeping what is helpful and discarding what is not—a process that is crucial to creating a mental atmosphere that will allow you to operate at the full potential God has put in you. If you don’t, you will end up living out your story based on the incomplete and often inaccurate script that has been handed to you by others. As Stephen Covey wrote:
These scripts come from people, not principles. And they rise out of our deep vulnerabilities, our deep dependency on others and our needs for acceptance and love, for belonging, for a sense of importance, for a feeling that we matter. Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are in control of it or not, there is a first creation to every part of our lives. We are either the second creation of our own proactive design, or we are the second creation of other people’s agenda, of circumstances or of past habits.5
Becoming “the second creation of [your] own proactive design” requires that you become aware of how you think about your value, your abilities, your dreams, and your goals; get rid of misinformation that isn’t helping you live as the person you know you can be; and focus instead on your true identity as a new creation in Christ. Consider just a handful of Scripture passages that speak to who you really are:
For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Eph. 2:10)
God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them. (Gen. 1:27)
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. (Ps. 139:13–14 NIV)
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! (1 John 3:1)
Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? (1 Cor. 3:16 NKJV)
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jer. 29:11)
When you think negatively about yourself, you are putting down God. You are his child, created in his image. He knit you together with meticulous care, filled you with potential, and has given you everything you need to accomplish the purposes he has for you. Why, then, would you choose to spend precious time operating from a place of self-doubt and pessimism that will do nothing but undermine the level of your life?
You get to decide what mental script you allow to direct your thoughts and dictate your days—the script that has come to you from well-intentioned (perhaps) but often misguided people speaking out of their own poor scripts or a script based on the true identity God has given you as his child. Choose wisely. Your decision will determine the messages your subconscious mind receives and thereby control the direction and quality of your entire life.
Your Thoughts and Your Relationships
Your thought life manifests itself in the quality of your relationships with others. That is because how you think and feel about yourself dictates how you interact with people. For example, if you see yourself as shy or socially awkward, that belief will lead you to avoid social situations and lose out on the relationships you may find through them. If you avoid connecting with other people because you are afraid you won’t be liked or that you will get hurt, you are crippling your life based on fear—fear that is counter to who you were created to be and perpetuated by the words you allow to run around in your head. Do you ever find yourself thinking things such as the following:
Phrases like these put you on the path to relational frustration. They become self-fulfilling prophecies. You may very well say the wrong thing when you talk to people, but if you do it because you expect to, you are living by the mental script that mandates it. If you have told yourself that you are not good at relating to other people or maintaining long-term relationships, your subconscious is working to fulfill those thought patterns. If it hears you say, “Oh, I always feel so awkward in large groups of people,” then guess what? You will dread the next social gathering you are invited to and then not enjoy it once you are there.
On the other hand, if you shift what you say when you talk to yourself and instead think things such as, I love being with and talking with the people in my life, I’m thankful that I am able to connect with others and express myself clearly, I’m open to relationships, or I’m comfortable being myself and accepting others for who they are, the way you engage with other people will change. Your subconscious will follow the new instructions and turn them into reality just as easily as it followed the old. With some time and repetition, the process really is that simple.
You can sabotage your relational life not only by thinking the wrong things about yourself but also by dwelling on the wrong thoughts when it comes to other people. For example, do you ever think things such as the following:
Thoughts like these may have truth to them. You and your mother may have complicated, deep-seated issues. But if you want to build your relationship with her, you can’t let those issues dominate your thinking. Instead, make a decision to focus on the good in your relationship. Think about what you love about her. Talk to yourself about those things. An intentionally renewed focus will change not only the way you see her but also the way you talk to her. Over time, your relationship will be transformed for the better because you made a choice to direct your thoughts in a positive way rather than letting them carry you down the path to aggravating problems.
The same is true with your spouse, your children, your friends, and your coworkers. You will see what you are looking for. If you constantly think about the problems in your relationships or the shortcomings of the people around you, you will see only those problems and shortcomings as you interact with them. If you focus instead on the good in the people in your life, you will start to see that good manifest itself. This simple tweak will shift your entire perspective, strengthening and growing even your toughest relationships.
Your Thoughts and Your Health
How do you feel today? Are you tired? Are you sick? Maybe you are feeling healthy, happy, and on top of the world. Here is something that may surprise you: how you feel has almost everything to do with how you think you feel. If you wake up in the morning thinking about how tired you are and wishing you could just pull the covers over your head and stay put, you will start the day feeling sluggish. Your body will respond to the directive of your thoughts by dragging through the morning, sans energy. Your entire day may play out at a subpar level because of the mental atmosphere you created for yourself before you even got out of bed.
On the other hand, if you wake up choosing to be grateful for another morning, focusing on how healthy you are becoming and the promise the day holds, your body will again respond accordingly. You will move through your day with more energy and joy. You will feel better, look better, be able to stick to a healthy lifestyle better, and have more to offer those around you—and all because of what you chose to say to yourself when the alarm went off.
What goes on in your mind actually creates chemical realities within your body. Different thoughts and their accompanying emotions cause neurons to fire in your brain, setting off correlating physical reactions. This isn’t new information. King David wrote about it thousands of years ago: “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength” (Prov. 17:22).
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale took it a step further:
The longer I live the more I am convinced that neither age nor circumstance needs to deprive us of energy and vitality. We are at last awakening to the close relationship between religion and health. We are beginning to comprehend a basic truth hitherto neglected, that our physical condition is determined very largely by our emotional condition, and our emotional life is profoundly regulated by our thought [mental] life. All through its pages, the Bible talks about vitality and force and life. The supreme over-all word of the Bible is life, and life means vitality—to be filled with energy.6
Science backs up both King David’s and Peale’s assertions. The stress that comes along with wrong thinking (and the resulting negative feelings and bad attitudes) raises blood pressure and releases cortisol into your system. We have already examined just how dangerous that can be over time. Choosing to let negative thoughts go in favor of more positive ones automatically improves your body’s state of being, leading to more complete health and wellness. Filling your mind with the right thoughts is imperative to becoming the new you.
Since the quality of your life is so directly tied to the quality of your internal dialogue, you must do all you can to shape that dialogue for your own good. Understanding the power of your thoughts or knowing you need to change is not enough. You have to take specific action. Here are some practical steps you can take to help adopt better thinking.
Listen to Your Internal Dialogue
The first step to creating a healthier thought life doesn’t require you to do anything but listen. You have to become aware of the script that is constantly running in your head.
One of the main things that separates us from the animals is our ability to think about our thought life, to note an individual thought passing through our minds, analyze it for its truth and worth, and then act accordingly. God gave us this unique ability when he made us in his image. But so often, we let our thoughts run on autopilot. They are just there, and we don’t give them much consideration. Or worse, we forget that we are the masters of our own thoughts and let them have their way with us. As you begin tuning into your own mental environment, keep these basic truths about thoughts in mind:
Becoming aware of what is going on in your head is a good first step. Next, you have to take some action in response to what you hear.
Take Every Thought Captive
As you surrender yourself to God, he begins to fill you with more peace, love, and joy. But the positive effects of those gifts will be thwarted if you don’t let them take root and influence your thoughts. It is up to you to resist habitual thought patterns and instead match your brain to the new thing God is doing in you.
How? By taking two steps Paul outlined in his letters to early Christian believers. The first step is to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5 NIV). This starts with listening to the thoughts in your head, but it goes further. You have to evaluate your thoughts, trapping and disposing of the ones that don’t line up with God’s truth.
Second, Paul says to “fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise” (Phil. 4:8). Paul says to “fix your thoughts.” In other words, be proactive in choosing how you focus your thoughts. When you capture and get rid of thoughts that are not in line with what God is working in your heart and then follow that up by shifting your attention to things that are true, right, and excellent, you will begin to see yourself and the world around you differently. Your self-image will improve, your relationships will become stronger, your body will be healthier. And that is all before words even begin coming out of your mouth.
There is one more key ingredient to making this shift—something that has to happen in the space between these two steps, causing them to work together to become a lifestyle rather than just a short-term fix.
Replace Old Thinking with New
Psychologists tell us that we can’t just get rid of a bad habit, including a negative thought pattern. We have to fill the vacated space with something new. Otherwise, our well-intentioned change won’t last; we will revert right back to comfortable habits and well-worn patterns. So as you begin eliminating thoughts that don’t benefit you, you have to immediately replace those thoughts with new ones that do. As you ship out the internal dialogue that keeps you depressed, shy, anxious, tired, and worried, you have to immediately fill the space in your mind that those thoughts occupied with a corresponding positive internal dialogue. It is not enough to think about true, positive, pure, and excellent things in general. Instead, connect them immediately to the vacated space of your captured thoughts. If you don’t, those old thoughts will creep right back in.
One leading author on the topic explains this concept by describing the mind as a mental apartment furnished with the things you think about yourself and the world around you.
[This furniture] is the old negative way of thinking that was handed down to us from our parents, our friends, our teachers. They gave us the furniture which we have kept and which we use in our mental apartment. Now let’s say that I agree to come over and help you get rid of all the old furniture. We remove every piece, every dish, every rug, table, bed, sofa and chair. We take out every old negative self-belief and store it away safely out of sight.
After I leave, you stand in the middle of your mental apartment. You look around and think, “This is great! I’ve gotten rid of all my old negative thinking.” . . . A little later that evening, after spending an hour or two with nothing but yourself and an empty apartment, what do you suppose you will do? You will go out to the garage where the old furniture is stored and get a chair! A little later, you will make another trip to the garage and bring in a table. . . . One by one you will begin to bring your old trusted and time-worn negative thoughts back into your mental apartment! Why? Because when I helped you remove the old furniture I didn’t give you any new furniture to replace it with.
When you decide to stop thinking negatively, and do not have an immediate, new positive vocabulary to replace the old, you will always return to the comfortable, old, negative self-talk of the past.7
Think back to the relationship examples above. When negative, defeating thoughts about your parents, your spouse, your children, or anyone else pop up, it is not enough to simply say to yourself, Oh, I shouldn’t think such a thing. Instead, you have to shift your focus toward something good, as we discussed. The most effective way to do that is to immediately replace the unproductive thought with a corresponding positive one. Out with the old, in with the new.
For example, if you catch yourself thinking something unconstructive, such as I can’t stand the way my children always second-guess me, capture that thought, get rid of it, and then immediately fill the space with a better thought, such as My children are learning to question and discern things for themselves. How can I nurture that? Don’t just stop at getting rid of the unhealthy thought; if you do, it will come back again and again. Instead, put something new in its place. Maybe you can see yourself in some of these examples:
Old thinking: I feel so fat and unhealthy.
Replacement thought: My body is an amazing machine. I am healthy and well.
Old thinking: I’m always tired.
Replacement thought: I feel great. I have so much energy today.
Old thinking: I’m sick of my job.
Replacement thought: I’m thankful for my job and the income it creates.
Old thinking: I’m not talented enough to do what I really want to do.
Replacement thought: I’m blessed with incredible skills and abilities, and I use them to their full potential.
You aren’t being delusional or ignoring reality when you replace your negative thoughts with healthier, positive ones. You are simply choosing to see the other side of the coin. It has been there all along; you just haven’t been looking at it. There is more than one way to think about every situation and event in your life. When you choose to see the positive, you are agreeing with God’s perspective—you are agreeing with his view of you, your circumstances, and the people he has put around you. That alone will propel you toward a fuller, happier life. As Paul wrote:
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. (Rom. 12:2, emphasis added)
There it is. God is in the process of transforming you, but he can’t complete that work in you unless you let him, unless you cooperate with him by letting his thoughts become your thoughts. Do your part to step out of your old ingrained thinking, the thinking that has left you feeling less than what you know you can be, and fill your mind instead with thoughts that can raise you to the best, truest version of yourself—the new you, ready to accept the abundant life God has in store for you (John 10:10).