Why Your Thoughts Matter

..and you have more control than you might want to admit

In this week’s post we are going to unpack thinking patterns that become the problems we create in our own lives. Stay with us here – this may not sound like a topic you want to approach, but the reality is, what and how we think matters. 

The type of brain plan human beings have relies on patterns – patterns of thought, emotion and even behavior. The decisions we make matter if we want to progress through the mud and muck of life without crashing out because it gets overwhelming really matter. 

Let’s get into this week’s topic on why thoughts matter.

     Sidenote – not every thought you think is truth and feeling fact!

Thoughts Become What Happens Next

Think about the following words, independent of the context of this post. What do you do when you think these words;

• Distracted
• Sleepy
• Unmotivated
• Excited
• Scared

If you stopped to pause after each word, did a thought reconstruct or rebuild from a past experience?  When you read the word, “distracted.”, maybe you remembered a time in school when the teacher was so boring, and the clock was ticking way too slowly, that your mind wandered somewhere off the scope of the present moment?

What about the word, “scared”?  Could it bring to your attention moments of fear with your abusive husband?  

What’s happening here is that these simple words have context and experience attached to them. They mean something to you – something that explains your lived experience. If you want to change what comes forward with these words, or any other word or context, you need to update the meaning for you – you need a new experience with the language of thought and emotion of your brain.

YOU are the Builder of your Brain

For way too long the belief has been that the brain is a reactive organ. It responds to stimuli that we cannot control. We also used to think that the emotions and the behaviors were just the responses to that stimuli – and if something bad happens – it’s not our fault – even if it was an overreaction that hurt someone. 

Being the builder of your brain means you are the controller too. You decide what thoughts and emotions you are going to act on. Yelling at someone isn’t their fault because they made you mad. It is on you to learn to navigate intense human interactions properly so that you don’t cause harm.

In truth, we think ourselves into the events and experiences of our lives. Each thought, each emotion – shows the patterns of decisions, or permissions or of restrictions we’ve established as our internal rules. 

The more unruly or disordered our thinking, the more we reinforce disordered thinking or bad habits, the easier it is to continue down this path – our actions begin as thought. The  more we think about things, the lighter we are on our own choices, the easier it is to either crash and burn or soar.

Our superpower is in learning to cognitive and emotional granularity – learning to be more at ease with how we want to live our lives so that the outcomes are reflective of those plans and choices.

Tripping into Trouble

A cheating husband doesn’t trip and fall into a physical or emotional extra-relational exchange.

Likewise, an abusive husband doesn’t just change from a loving man to one that targets and coerces his wife. He thinks himself into these patterns and choices.

Thinking About Thinking…

…or ‘metacognition’ is the self-awareness of your own thought patterns, habits and planning. It is a component of learning. It is knowledge or what you know about thinking and regulation, or how you control what you think. 

The practice of thoughts (and emotions) modulation strengthens skills so you can deliberate, evaluate, and update thought processes to improve your decisions and choices. Through this process you learn to update how you made sense of an event and then reframe that experience to live with it or improve it going forward. 

When metacognition is poor or weak, thoughts and emotions often become disordered. When what you think about is so self-focused that you bypass an effective internal auditing system, your beliefs and attitudes also become disordered.

The term disordered here in this context means – out of order. You might also see this as unhealthy. Unhealthy thought patterns can lead to seeing the world around you in negative ways. We often refer to this as ‘learned helplessness.’

Our Predictive Brain

When you understand the real mechanics of your brain, and how important it is to keep the patterns productive and resilient, you’ll see why creating meaning from experience in healthy ways matters. 

The thoughts and emotions we have are created from the concepts and categories that we assign meaning to as a result of life experiences. This means that if you want to harness the power of personal potential, you need to program into your prediction machine (AKA, your brain) beliefs that support your potential, knowing that you will find it amidst the struggles and adversities of life.  If, on the other hand, you see the struggle as defeat – potential will fade into the thoughts you create about your defeat. 

This process works the same in our evaluations of people. If an abusive man has contempt for women, he will speak to them, about them, and even treat them with the thoughts that he creates for them – even if he speaks in ‘relationally appropriate’ ways in public (to protect his image) his actions, or the evidence of his beliefs will prove the contempt.. The brain does not move counter to the programming you give it.

Constant Recalibration

As we progress down the road of life we cannot expect the streets to remain dry and free of debris and hazard. We need to keep our eyes wide open, preparing for recalibration at all times – and on some days – those adjustments require a lot from us. 

There will be people in our lives that cause us incredible pain. We have to figure out how to address the harm, and how to carry that harm forward without it creating more wreckage. How we think about the process matters. 

If we expect events or people outside of us to always do the right thing, never say or do anything that brings injury or problems into our path, we are misunderstanding what this life is meant to teach us. 

If we expect that all of our plans will be fruitful, or that we won’t ever struggle to stay motivated , we might hand over our power of potential to the detours and potholes of life. 

We need cognitive flexibility to navigate life. It is just that important.

Deliberate Thinking and Planning

We need to be deliberate in how we approach life, especially with the way our world is at present. This attention to deliberate planning helps reinforce the neural network of our brain, it reinforces positive cognition and emotion. These properly ordered thinking patterns are as critical to building resilience as is learning to lean into hurt, pain, overwhelm without crashing out. 

We teach ourselves to do this through small repetitive and positive self talk. In the same way negative rumination can lead us into misery, positive reinforced thought helps us navigate life in both the good times and the difficult. These habits are as important to our ability to live well as is the healthy food, water, and sleep our body needs to thrive.

Living Well Membership

No matter what situation you are in at present, you have the potential to bring great power into your life – just in the way you think and order your thoughts. The powerful energy of thought in partnership with the powerful pattern network of our brain is our super-power. 

If you want more content and resources like this. If you want to learn how to harness the energy of your thoughts and your mind. There is a process to unlock potential, reduce the stuckness you may feel even if the present circumstances don’t change. 

Join us in July to learn how to unlock your living well potential.