No, I did not miss a comma in the title. I'm not telling you think and believe, I'm telling you to think "Believe". As in, believe in yourself, believe in your worth, believe your life is good.
Stop the caterpillar thinking, you are a butterfly.
The average person thinks 48.6 thoughts per minute, adding up to seventy thousand thoughts per day.[i] While some are intentional, many are just those thoughts racing in the back of your mind on a revolving loop. You know the ones. Research shows that these repetitive thoughts are 95 percent the same thoughts every day and 80 percent negative![ii]
Mary A. Kassian in her book The Right Kind of Strong compares this repetitive negative self-talk to that of wearing a path in the grass. The same path is travelled over and over and over leaving a visible area, hard, and worn. When we are constantly telling ourselves something over and over, we wear the same type of path in our brain. “As the path gets harder, deeper, more pronounced, the recurrent negative thought turns into an unhealthy mind-set.”
When our brains think a certain way, becomes wired (that worn path) a certain way, we start to act accordingly.
The way we think is the way we act.
This is not a novel concept. There are many references in all sorts of genres:
Jack Canfield, in The Success Principles, explains the Law of Attraction in its most basic form as “What we think about, talk about, believe strongly about, and feel intensely about, you will bring about.”
“Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:21 (NIV)
“All that we are is a result of what we have thought.” – Buddha
“A man is but a product of his thoughts. What he thinks he becomes.” – Gandi
I am guilty. I am aware of the constant negative loop that goes on in my head. (You’ll hear me say a lot that my brain is an asshole.)
I created a worn path in my brain that I ended up living. I had this bad habit of planning for the worst-case scenario and expecting failure because I didn’t believe I deserved better.
Let me just be raw and real here a minute, roughly 12 years ago, I was in a long-term relationship that I fully expected to be “the one” until, as I like to refer to it, life sucker punched me in the face, the gut, and kicked me while I was down. I did NOT see it coming.
I’ll spare the gruesome details of that slow healing process, and the additional hurt I both received and inflicted over the followings years, but the end result was me, fearing the worst but ALWAYS planning for it. Along with all the “You’re not good enough.” “You must have driven him to it.” “You are ugly.” “You aren’t worthy.” “You’re an idiot.” Blah, blah, blah, ridiculous noise my brain liked to repeat.
My theory being that if I expect and plan for the worst, I cannot be blind side sucker punched by life or people again, basically eliminating all blind sides because “I saw that coming.”
Have your ever heard yourself say something similar? “I knew it!” “That’s my luck.” “I expected as much.” Etc.? Those thoughts weren't alone where they? I bet you’ve had some negative noise on repeat in the back on your brain too huh?
Fast forward to a new relationship, and due to this new plan-for-the-worst thinking I ended up settling for way less than I deserved, feeling constantly on edge, waiting for it to blow up in my face like "I knew it would." Guess what? It did. [Sidenote, I'm not taking the blame for other's actions because I did not deserve how I was treated but I am explaining that that mindset had A LOT to do with how I behaved and my inaction when I knew something was off because I didn't know my own worth. Thanks, brain. *eyeroll*]
I read a passage in my daily devotional that hit home for me:
“I’m challenging myself not to mentally run too far into an unknown future and write a script of worst-case scenarios. Often, what I expect tomorrow to bring will start to play out in my attitude. I think, in some weird way, this protects me from getting caught off guard. But in reality, when I do this, my negativity pulls me away from trusting God, loving people, and enjoying what today offers. And it sometimes even becomes a self-fulfilled prophecies as I trade the good of today for living in fear of tomorrow.”
--Lysa Terkeurst, Seeing Beautiful Again.
Fortunately, we aren’t stuck. Let’s go back to that same grass path analogy. You can start taking a different path, and the grass will start to grow back on the previously worn path while you are creating a new one.
Same goes for our thought process. It is not going to be an overnight fix. The worn path is there, and it will take intentional thinking and action to walk a different way and time to wear down the new path.
It is because of all this that I decided to start intentionally switching my focus.
I would write down 3 “little wins” every night before bed. Somedays, they were nothing more than “I’m actually writing these down.” or even “I washed my face.”
Ya’ll somedays it was hard to see anything that was a “win” but eventually my brain began to see that there were actually good things that went my way every day.
I could stop waiting for the other shoe to drop because by waiting for it, I was basically willing it into existence because of my actions.
Let’s shut up the noise on repeat in our brain.
Let’s focus on the good that we DO deserve and IS happening around us!
Need help? Check out our just released Life2Lifers - Daily Journal.
Ashley
Footnotes:
[i] Esther Landhuis, “Neuroscience: Big Brain, Big Data” Scientific American, January 26, 2017 - quoted in The Right Kind of Strong by Mary A. Kassian
[ii] The National Science Foundation, quoted in Fran Simone, “Negative Self-Talk: Don’t Let It Overwhelm You,” Psychology Today, December 4, 2017 - quoted in The Right Kind of Strong by Mary A. Kassian
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