Your thoughts are creating your reality
Thoughts create emotions and behaviours, behaviours become beliefs and outcomes.
If you consider that we think anywhere between 6,000 and 70,000 thoughts a day (the latter being the overthinkers), the quality of your thoughts will determine the quality of your life. The good thing is that thoughts can be changed.
So, let’s do a quick check-in. If you were to score the quality of your thoughts out of 100%, what percentage of positive, uplifting thoughts do you have per day?
The usual answer is between 30% and 60% for the average person who isn’t aware of the mind-body connection and makes it a daily practice to ensure that the percentage of their positive thoughts is more than 60% per day. If the score is lower, then there is a bit more work to be done.
I say work, because your brain behaves like muscles, even though it is an organ. Like going to the gym, if you exercise a muscle a certain way then it becomes stronger.
If you’re suffering from low mood, depression, anxiety, or OCD then it just means that, over time, you’ve inadvertently and accidentally exercised it in a way that has made it stronger in that area.
Remember, thoughts create emotions and behaviours and behaviours become beliefs and outcomes, and thoughts can be changed.
For example, those of you who undermine yourself, from the seemingly harmless brush-off of a compliment to self-gaslighting, you’re inadvertently exercising the brain muscle of low self-esteem, distrust of yourself and a lack of self-confidence and self-belief. The opposite of this is self-confidence, trust, belief and esteem. The two outcomes are very different and driven by the everyday quality of the words you use.
Those of you who fear the worst, are perpetually predicting terrible outcomes for future events that haven’t happened yet and are extremely unlikely to occur will be inadvertently and unintentionally exercising the brain muscle of anxiety. Anxiety isn’t an emotion, it’s the over-arousal of the fight-flight survival mechanism. If this mechanism is activated frequently, over time, without time to rest and digest, which is the opposite, then this mechanism behaves as if it were permanently switched on – all activated by thoughts alone.
Remember, thoughts can be changed and therefore depression, anxiety and any other unhelpful habitual behaviours such as overthinking, OCD, disordered eating, and self-loathing can be changed. This does take time, and consistent application of a few steps, and this is usually where the challenge presents itself.
The first step in changing your thoughts, to change your behaviours, to change your beliefs and outcomes, is to notice that they are occurring in the first place.
Many of us operate on repetitive thoughts, mostly about what has already happened or what is yet to happen. Neither of which can be influenced or changed. Nobody has a time machine or a crystal ball. It is thought that around 70-90% of our thoughts are repeated – unless you have embraced being mindful and have learnt the art of noticing your thoughts, stilling your thoughts, and making a choice about what you are thinking, it may well feel as if you have a heard of stampeding thought buffaloes running amok in your head, or a pinball machine set on launch and fire mode without the ball falling back into the well. Wherever you are on your journey, your quality of thoughts will dictate the quality of your life.
No amount of healthy eating and exercise will create a happy life if your thoughts are equivalent to a negative cesspool of toxicity, and this applies to what you think about others as well as yourself. Your brain and every cell in your body will not be able to differentiate between ‘you’ as in another person and ‘you’ as in yourself. Be mindful about what you think and start becoming the gatekeeper to your own happiness.
As easy as it sounds – just change your thoughts and you’ll change your life – this does require a commitment to yourself. A non-negotiable contract with yourself to strive to make each day a better quality of thoughts than the day before. This consistent commitment to change will alter the scales towards better outcomes. You’re not looking for revolutionary change, as this can be almost impossible to maintain, more incremental, mindful, daily practices to improve the overall quality of your thoughts. You wouldn’t go to the gym, lift one set of weights, maybe twice a month, and expect to see visible results in your physique. The same applies to your mind. Exercising your mind, daily, preferably several times a day, is the key to lasting, permanent and positive changes to the quality of your thoughts, which then become your beliefs, which then become your outcomes.
Another mistake that is often made is trying to change too many things at once. Look for one thought, that is negative, limiting and unhelpful and decide what the opposite is, then start noticing every time you have that thought, then make a conscious choice and change it to the opposite. Once you have mastered this and changed it, pick another negative, limiting and unhelpful thought, decide what the opposite is and change it. Keep repeating this action and very soon the pendulum will shift and the norm will become positive and uplifting thoughts.
Here's a framework that can help you change the quality of your thoughts, one thought at a time:
1) Notice the thought (it might be more of an awareness of an emotion).
2) Label the thought.
3) Challenge the thought (THINK, is it True, Helpful, Important, Necessary, Kind) if not, don’t say it.
4) Change the thought to one that is positively THINK.
5) Repeat the new thought.
If you’re someone who needs to listen or be guided several times to get the habit going, then there are several options on my resources page:
Are both excellent places to start.
You may even want to enlist the help of others, to nudge you or alert you about what you are saying out loud. There is no room for a negative ninny in improving the quality of your life – even gossiping negatively about others will set you back, so keep this to an absolute minimum, and preferably not at all.
One last tip – avoid the news, especially before bed, don’t read the newspapers if they upset you and don’t buy beauty magazines. They are all biased as happiness doesn’t sell.
There’s a reason why a dog is always happier than its owner, the only thoughts present, are the present.