Intentional thinking
Practising believing something you don’t yet believe, is like adding fuel to the fire if you are striving towards achieving a new goal, whether that is weight loss or something else. The first step to doing that is becoming aware of what you currently believe, what your current thoughts are.
Your brain likes to be efficient. It doesn’t like to think new things. Thinking new things takes a lot of energy. Your brain likes to think things it’s already thought before because those thoughts flow easily along well-worn super highway like neural pathways. New thoughts need to create their own new path. Your brain doesn’t judge between thoughts that are positive and wonderful and lovely. Your brain wants thoughts that are familiar.
And so, it doesn’t filter it out. It just says, well, we’ve thought that a lot so let’s keep thinking it. And it’s likely that some of those thoughts aren’t helping you and are in fact hindering you from achieving your current goals. For example, thoughts like ‘I’ll never lose my excess weight’ or ‘I don’t have enough will power’ or ‘I’m not good enough’. Thoughts that you have been thinking for years and years, you may not even realise are thoughts. You may think they’re just an observation. You may think they’re the truth.
So, the first thing you want to do is really become aware of all the negative thoughts that you’re thinking and then you want to practice on purpose thinking new thoughts that will serve you.
So today I’m going to offer you a few new thoughts for you to consider. If you like them, decide to practice thinking them on purpose. Think how you feel when you think them. What feelings do they create for you? Do those feelings motivate you to take the actions you need to achieve your goals?
#1 The discomfort of growth is always better than the discomfort of stagnation
Life is 50/50. 50% positive emotion, 50% negative emotion. This is a good thing because you can’t experience happiness without sadness, nor excitement without boredom. So, if you’re feeling negative emotion 50% of the time, would you rather feel uncomfortable growing and evolving, or uncomfortable stagnating? You can feel bored because your life is boring, or you can feel doubt and fear because you are trying new things. The discomfort of growth keeps us moving forward towards our goals.
#2 You are 100% lovable
Your lovability is infinite. It is at 100%. When love is involved, there is the feeling of love and then there is the object of love. But lovability depends on the person loving. And that goes both ways. So how much I love someone does not depend on them. It depends on my capacity to love them. My capacity to love someone will determine how loveable they are for me. Now, what is beautiful about this is there is nothing they can do, or not do, that will make them more loveable. The only thing that makes them more loveable is me increasing my capacity to love them. Also note that even if they are incredibly loveable, that doesn’t mean that they will feel the love that I am feeling for them.
So, the thought, ‘I am always 100% loveable’, is an invitation for you to increase your capacity to love yourself. If your lovability is infinite, then your capacity to love yourself can be infinite as well. And when you learn how to love yourself at the highest level, then you can transfer that experience to everyone else around you.
#3 You create your life experience
You create your life experience, it doesn’t happen to you. This is hard for some of us. We talk about how bad our day was, about how bad our experience of something happening in life is. It’s so easy to react to an event that we think of as negative and experience the negative feelings that come with it, but the reality is you get to create your experience.
You choose how to think about things that happen in life, through your thinking you can make how you feel awful, or you can make it something much better.
A couple of years ago my husband had a mild stroke. He lost some of his peripheral vision and the doctors didn’t know whether he would be able to drive again. We live in a remote farmhouse so there is no option to go anywhere by public transport. Continuing to live where we do, which we love, would no longer be an option if he couldn’t drive, if he was to have any sort of independence.
I chose to think very positively about this situation. First, I refused to believe that he wouldn’t be able to drive again, until we had evidence that his eye sight was never going to improve. And secondly, we started to look at beautiful houses in the middle of town close to public transport. We talked about all the benefits of living close to restaurants and pubs, theatres and cinemas and a train station so we could just walk out of the house and go for days out. It was an enjoyable few months. We really enjoyed the extra time that we got to spend together as a result of him not being able to drive.
The alternative was to focus on the negative, dwell on how awful it was, how inconvenient, undermining of his confidence, but what would have been the point in that? So, to conclude this little story, three months after his stroke he passed all eye tests and was cleared for driving.
#4 The future is always better than the past
It’s so exciting to believe that life only gets better and better. And it can always, always be true because the future only ever exists in your mind, and if you can always imagine it better than your past, why not? Even if your past is spectacular, imagine your future being even better. How exciting is that?
And you can look at that on the big picture scale like your whole past of your childhood and your career, or you can look at it like yesterday compared to tomorrow.
You think of all the greatest things in the world, the great literature, the great music, the great technological developments; everything is built on creating something better than was ever created before. Why don’t you think of creating something better than you’ve ever created before?
#5 The worst thing that can happen is a feeling
When you think that the worst that can happen is a feeling and remind yourself that a feeling is just a vibration in your body it can be very empowering. This is a great thought for those of us that tend to worry or have anxiety. The better we get at being willing to feel and experience negative emotion the more we grow in confidence and create a beautiful life for ourselves.
What intentional thoughts do you want to create for yourself?
Take a few moments, a pen and note pad and write down what thoughts you would like to believe. What thoughts do you believe now that you really like and want to think more intentionally? And what thoughts would you like to believe that you don’t yet believe?
Work with me
If you’re interested to learn how you can work with me to develop the skill of intentional thinking further, book a free ‘Life Consultation’ on my calendar.
