Has your mind ever been your worst enemy?

 How to Stop Believing All Your Thoughts

Has your mind ever been your worst enemy? You know the feeling. As you go through your day, out of nowhere your mind says something like “You’re going to get sick and die.” What–where did that come from? At that moment, you have to make a choice. The easiest choice, of course, is to look for all the reasons why your mind is telling you the truth. The more difficult, but the choice is to observe the thought for what it is–a thought. Your mind does not have to dictate your life. But because nobody taught you how to use your mind, you have a contentious relationship with your thoughts. If you believe every bad and stressful thought you have you’ll be miserable and unhappy for the rest of your life. Your thoughts are not a trustworthy source of information.  

The Problem With Your Thoughts

Why is it easier to believe your stressful thoughts than your good thoughts? Great question. Blame your biology. Your brain’s primary concern is to keep you alive, not make you happy. So it’s easier to believe something bad will happen to you than something good. Your brain always looks for the negative and reacts to it. But thoughts are only thoughts, they aren’t facts. Check out this list of common stressful thoughts: I’m going to lose my job. My husband/wife is going to leave me. I’m going to go broke. Things will never get any better. My kid is going to get sick. I’m going to fail.

Have you ever had any of these thoughts? I thought so. None of these thoughts are original to you. Everyone has them. You can tune in to a thought frequency the way a radio tunes into a station. That means you can change the station any time you choose.

Avoid This Mistake at All Costs

Your thoughts become beliefs, and your beliefs become the way you interpret reality. Once you adopt a belief, you only pay attention to things that confirm what you already believe. How Your Thinking Creates Your Reality: You write the story of what you think is likely and/or possible based on what you believe is true and then you take actions consistent with those expectations. When you act on what you expect will happen before it actually happens, you participate in creating the experience. That’s why it’s so important not to trust every thought that runs through your mind. The things you believe become your reality. You can use this to your advantage. How do you do that? If you’re able to believe something bad will happen, you can also believe something good will happen. It takes practice to learn how to recognize stressful thoughts before they take root. At this point you may be thinking, I know when I have stressful thoughts. But in truth, you have years of practice at believing whatever your brain tells you. The mind will try to trick you into believing that everything it tells you is important. But clinical psychologist, Just because your mind says something is important does not mean it actually is important. Putting too much stock on what your mind tells you is a recipe for an anxiety disorder. So it’s crucial not to give your mind too much respect.

How to Replace Your Thoughts

The key to overcoming destructive thoughts is to isolate and replace them. Recognize destructive thoughts and beliefs when you have them and write them down (isolate). Then change it to a more empowering belief (replace). This will help you to question and replace your thoughts by asking four simple questions.

To achieve the best results, write your responses without censoring your thoughts. This allows you to see what’s happening in your mind. Choose a single negative or stressful thought and write out the answer to each question, one at a time. 

Here The Four Questions:

Is it true?

Can you absolutely know it’s true?

How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

Who would you be without that thought?

Now take that original destructive thought or belief, and turn it around to its opposite. Make it what you really want it to be. Don’t forget, your beliefs become your reality.

For example, if your original thought was “I’m always broke,” change it to “I’m abundant in life.” You might not have an abundance of money, but you have an abundance of air to breathe, or food to eat, or love to give. Abundance in one area leads to abundance in others. In doing this exercise you can isolate and replace your beliefs and turn your life around.

Your mind will try to make your thoughts feel important and urgent. But just because they feel important doesn’t make them important. Your thoughts can work for you or against you, and it’s up to you.