There is so much talk today about the myriad of negative influences in our world. This is without question. What very few people are talking about is what our individual responses are to the circumstances of our lives. Thank you so much to Brooke Castillo and her Life Coach School podcast and Jody Moore and her podcast Bold New Mom, for teaching me about circumstances and and thoughts.
One of the most powerful things we can realize and use in our everyday lives is to understand the difference between circumstances and thoughts. Knowing this difference is the first step in living an intentional life.
I love Ephesians 4:14 - "that we henceforth be no more children. tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive." Do you ever feel your life is so hectic, in such turmoil, that you are being tossed around like you're in a storm. I daresay we have all felt this at some point. In the midst of this turmoil, have you ever felt powerless. I certainly have. Life has the ability to do that to us. But guess what? We don't have to just accept that. That doesn't have to be our reality!
What do I mean? How do you avoid this storminess? I don't believe we can. Avoiding the hard things is not the purpose we were put here for. We have to have those hard things to learn from. Here's what I am talking about. The "things" of this life, the things that happen to us and that we experience and have to go through, are circumstances. And circumstances are neutral. They are neither positive or negative. I worked with a guy that was always saying "it is what it is" I love this phrase. That's what I mean by a circumstance, it just is. What gives a circumstance meaning to each of us is our thoughts. It is ourselves that assigns a circumstance a meaning.
How I wish we all understood this idea. The power of this is that everything that happens to us, WE get to decide how we are going to think, and therefore feel, about it. Do you see it? We get to choose, which means we have power and control for ourselves, for our thoughts. So much is out in the world about how we have to surrender our need for control. This is true for the circumstances of our lives. Those things are what they are, and we don't have control over them. But what we do have control over is our response to those circumstances, our thoughts. What then follows is that we also have control over our feelings, actions, and behaviors. This is what I mean by living an intentional life. We get to act instead of being acted upon.
Knowing this begins to get us out of the powerless and helpless mentality. Practicing it gives us a measure of peace, and even control, in our lives.
We truly can choose to respond to ANYTHING in our lives HOWEVER we want. The problem is, we don't very often pay attention to our thoughts. We let our thoughts work on us, push on us, dictate to us, how we feel and behave. Much more often then not, this means that we are showing up and acting at less than our best.
WE MUST CHANGE THIS!!!
WHY?
I am trained as a family medicine physician, and I am fascinated and have a special interest in mental health diseases. Let me first be very clear on this. I believe that depression and anxiety specifically, and mental health disorders in general, are very bit as real a diagnosis and treatable condition as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and any other medical condition we can diagnose. Please do not mistake my comments about mental health as anything else. Mental health diagnoses are every bit as real and destructive as every other disease state that we treat. And they are every bit as treatable.
Having said that, I believe that are thoughts are running rampant and unchecked. I believe the epidemic of rate of suicides are directly correlated to our thoughts being unrecognized and uncontrolled. Now of course, this is not the only factor for the increase in suicides. That's a topic for another day. But I absolutely believe that it is a significant factor!
I recently was listening to one of Jody Moore's podcasts where she said she wished they would teach how to deal with emotions in public schools and colleges. I believe we as a society are not educated and equipped to deal with emotions. This is mostly concerning negative emotions, but interestingly, strong positive emotions can also affect us in a very similar way. Also a conversation for another day. Since our emotions, or feelings, stem from our thoughts, thought work is the basis of any discussion about living intentionally.
I believe that in order to have the impact that we want on suicide rates, addiction rates, sexual misconduct allegations, or any of the other problems we see rising at such alarming rates, we have to start educating ourselves, and our children, about the power of our thoughts. We need to start living our lives with intention: the intention to deliberately choose to "look at the bright side", to choose happiness, to choose to be optimistic, to choose to show up the way we want to show up, to choose to be our best selves.
We have the power within us to choose all these things!
I want to make one last comment. I mentioned the phrase thought work earlier. I want to say that as strongly as I believe that our thoughts are having a powerful and unrecognized effect on us, I just as strongly believe that it is WORK, in every sense of the word, to begin to master and take control of our thoughts. To call it thought work is not a trite or lightly used phrase. I was 43 when I first begin exploring and learning these ideas. That means I had 43 years worth of my brain creating "thought superhighways" that I had to overcome. It takes work, and it is often hard, frustrating work. It takes a determined effort, persistence and practice. It takes a hope and a belief that taking control of and choosing our thoughts, is possible and does make a difference. Most of all, it takes a desire within each of us, to want to be a better version of ourselves tomorrow than we are today.
We can become that better version of ourselves when we choose to learn how, and then practice and do the thought work. I love what this has done for me, my wife, and my family. I am so looking forward to sharing what I have learned that you can also experience the transformation that can happen!
One of the most powerful things we can realize and use in our everyday lives is to understand the difference between circumstances and thoughts. Knowing this difference is the first step in living an intentional life.
I love Ephesians 4:14 - "that we henceforth be no more children. tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive." Do you ever feel your life is so hectic, in such turmoil, that you are being tossed around like you're in a storm. I daresay we have all felt this at some point. In the midst of this turmoil, have you ever felt powerless. I certainly have. Life has the ability to do that to us. But guess what? We don't have to just accept that. That doesn't have to be our reality!
What do I mean? How do you avoid this storminess? I don't believe we can. Avoiding the hard things is not the purpose we were put here for. We have to have those hard things to learn from. Here's what I am talking about. The "things" of this life, the things that happen to us and that we experience and have to go through, are circumstances. And circumstances are neutral. They are neither positive or negative. I worked with a guy that was always saying "it is what it is" I love this phrase. That's what I mean by a circumstance, it just is. What gives a circumstance meaning to each of us is our thoughts. It is ourselves that assigns a circumstance a meaning.
How I wish we all understood this idea. The power of this is that everything that happens to us, WE get to decide how we are going to think, and therefore feel, about it. Do you see it? We get to choose, which means we have power and control for ourselves, for our thoughts. So much is out in the world about how we have to surrender our need for control. This is true for the circumstances of our lives. Those things are what they are, and we don't have control over them. But what we do have control over is our response to those circumstances, our thoughts. What then follows is that we also have control over our feelings, actions, and behaviors. This is what I mean by living an intentional life. We get to act instead of being acted upon.
Knowing this begins to get us out of the powerless and helpless mentality. Practicing it gives us a measure of peace, and even control, in our lives.
We truly can choose to respond to ANYTHING in our lives HOWEVER we want. The problem is, we don't very often pay attention to our thoughts. We let our thoughts work on us, push on us, dictate to us, how we feel and behave. Much more often then not, this means that we are showing up and acting at less than our best.
WE MUST CHANGE THIS!!!
WHY?
I am trained as a family medicine physician, and I am fascinated and have a special interest in mental health diseases. Let me first be very clear on this. I believe that depression and anxiety specifically, and mental health disorders in general, are very bit as real a diagnosis and treatable condition as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and any other medical condition we can diagnose. Please do not mistake my comments about mental health as anything else. Mental health diagnoses are every bit as real and destructive as every other disease state that we treat. And they are every bit as treatable.
Having said that, I believe that are thoughts are running rampant and unchecked. I believe the epidemic of rate of suicides are directly correlated to our thoughts being unrecognized and uncontrolled. Now of course, this is not the only factor for the increase in suicides. That's a topic for another day. But I absolutely believe that it is a significant factor!
I recently was listening to one of Jody Moore's podcasts where she said she wished they would teach how to deal with emotions in public schools and colleges. I believe we as a society are not educated and equipped to deal with emotions. This is mostly concerning negative emotions, but interestingly, strong positive emotions can also affect us in a very similar way. Also a conversation for another day. Since our emotions, or feelings, stem from our thoughts, thought work is the basis of any discussion about living intentionally.
I believe that in order to have the impact that we want on suicide rates, addiction rates, sexual misconduct allegations, or any of the other problems we see rising at such alarming rates, we have to start educating ourselves, and our children, about the power of our thoughts. We need to start living our lives with intention: the intention to deliberately choose to "look at the bright side", to choose happiness, to choose to be optimistic, to choose to show up the way we want to show up, to choose to be our best selves.
We have the power within us to choose all these things!
I want to make one last comment. I mentioned the phrase thought work earlier. I want to say that as strongly as I believe that our thoughts are having a powerful and unrecognized effect on us, I just as strongly believe that it is WORK, in every sense of the word, to begin to master and take control of our thoughts. To call it thought work is not a trite or lightly used phrase. I was 43 when I first begin exploring and learning these ideas. That means I had 43 years worth of my brain creating "thought superhighways" that I had to overcome. It takes work, and it is often hard, frustrating work. It takes a determined effort, persistence and practice. It takes a hope and a belief that taking control of and choosing our thoughts, is possible and does make a difference. Most of all, it takes a desire within each of us, to want to be a better version of ourselves tomorrow than we are today.
We can become that better version of ourselves when we choose to learn how, and then practice and do the thought work. I love what this has done for me, my wife, and my family. I am so looking forward to sharing what I have learned that you can also experience the transformation that can happen!
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