Changing Your Thoughts May Change Your Destiny
You may hear this quite frequently. “If you want to improve your life, you must think differently”. It sounds good, there’s no doubt about it. However, is changing your thoughts as easy as it sounds? How could you do it? The truth is that it’s more complicated than it seems; the brain isn’t like a room where one can replace some pieces of furniture from one day to another.
Our psychological universe is very resistant. For that reason, making changes in it isn’t easy nor does it work quickly. “Transform your negative thoughts into positive ones” is something a lot of people say but they don’t always say how to do it. Our mental schemes are deep, rigid, and not very spontaneous. Changing your thoughts is possible but it requires hard work in order to break those thought patterns you’re attached to.
On the other hand, there’s something you must keep in mind. Thoughts, by themselves, have no power over you. In reality, they’re nothing more than fleeting mental experiences, they come and go throughout the day. However, it’s easy to end up reinforcing some thoughts over others and giving importance to ideas that may not be the most beneficial. This is how anxiety and depression arise.
To think well is to live well. Learning how to do it means getting close to a remarkable change in your immediate reality. Only through it will you be able to experience well-being.
Changing your thoughts is possible
Frederic Charles Bartlett, professor of experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge, spoke about the schemas of the mind in 1920. Additionally, he touched on something that would be decisive in therapy. Basically, it’s possible to reconstruct thought and memory. Bartlett was part of what was later defined as the “cognitive revolution”, a psychological approach that focused on individual mental processes.
Later on, decisive techniques such as cognitive restructuring came to be. This refers to a therapeutic process in which negative and irrational thoughts (cognitive distortions) must be identified and then confronted. It’s a way of replacing those beliefs that subordinate the individual to suffering with more rational ones in order for them to develop their full potential.
Now, as we pointed out at the beginning, this transformation journey isn’t easy. Changing your thoughts isn’t something you can do from one week to the next. The human mind is stubborn. It’s complicated to convince it to interpret certain things in a different way. It’s also difficult to see the bright side of things when you’ve been going through life focusing on negativity.
Likewise, you mustn’t ignore the fact that emotion and thoughts always go hand in hand, they feed off each other. It’s very hard to ask the mind to take things differently and think of new solutions when you’re trapped by fear, anguish, or sadness. Is there anything to do in these cases? Let’s see.
Thoughts are like water
Thoughts run wildly in the mind, they’re like torrents of water flowing at full speed. It isn’t always possible to be aware of what’s happening on the inside.
As we mentioned, changing your thoughts is possible but there’s a strategy you must follow in order to succeed at it. First off, you must detect which thoughts you must transform right away. In other words, you must become a hunter of the negative and irrational ideas that pollute your psychic universe. To do this, it’s best to relax, calm the mind, grab a notebook, and describe the thoughts that disturb you.
The courtroom: analyze them
Once you detect those negative thoughts, you must take them to the “courtroom”. What does this mean? Basically, you must have a dialogue with yourself and pass those ideas through a filter. Ask yourself: “Does this thought make sense?”, “Is it helpful in any way?”, “If it isn’t good for me, why am I reinforcing it? “, and “What should I do about it?”
Changing your thoughts may change your destiny
The last step is the most decisive and exciting. This is where your commitment and responsibility toward yourself must rise. After all, the process of changing your thoughts requires facing your true self. Only then will you be able to discover what lies behind the mask you put on before others (and sometimes even yourself).
Being aware of yourself may be difficult. After all, it’s tough to realize just how much you may have hindered your own path to growth. However, you’re still on time, it’s still possible to become a better version of yourself.
The last stage in this task involves reformulating those old and harmful ideas into clearer, optimistic, realistic, and useful ones. Set negativity aside so that hope and good change can come your way. Changing the way you think may not just change you as a person but everything around you.
Allow yourself to feel free and more confident to make better decisions. That being said, don’t hesitate to change your thought patterns and live the life you deserve.