| We THINK we have no control over our thoughts. As a matter of fact, I bet you’ve said something like this before- • “Sorry, I was lost in my thoughts … “ • “My thoughts got away from me … “ • “I got carried away by a thought … “ The plain truth is, we don’t think about our thinking in totality; we simply pick a thought out every once in a while that we want to flip. But the WAY we think? Nope! And today we’re talking about it for two reasons: l. It’s easier to give a big picture analysis rather than trying to figure out what’s what. 2. Overthinking might be, as Jon Acuff calls it, the soundtrack of your life. I know it has been for me! Soundtracks transform movies. Awards are given to the best soundtracks for movies each year. Navy SEAL and author David Goggins said, “The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself. You wake up with them, you walk around with them, you go to bed with them, you act on them: good or bad.” Do you have a good soundtrack? An empowering one filled with positive thoughts? Or do you have a bad soundtrack, disempowering and full of negativity? Persistent, repetitive thoughts tend to be negative; that’s the amygdala going full throttle again, trying to protect you. Don’t believe me? Think about something you did that was embarrassing, or a time you said something you wish you could take back. Easy, right? Whereas you have to remind yourself to track your daily wins. Negativity would happily reign supreme in your head – if you let it. And it’s not like it’s WANTED, it just shows up reporting for duty like a negativity soldier. Roy Baumeister, author of The Power of Bad: How Negativity Rules Us All and How We Can Rule It, says, “There is no opposite of trauma in the English language because no single event can have a lasting impact. You can recall happy moments, but it’s the “involuntary memories” that tend to pop up, and they’re generally negative.” What’s really interesting, however, is that as we overthink, our brains tend to get a little creative … • Lying about memories • Confusing fake trauma with real trauma • Believing what it already believes Malcolm Gladwell calls the first one “flashlight memories.” In other words, over time, the details morph – there’s an average of a 60% decline in memory consistency. 60% of the time, the story changes! 9/11 is an example – you remember where you were, but 3 years later, a researcher asked the same folks the same question and the details changed… from the big stuff to the little stuff! A professor showed students side by side what they wrote 3 years ago and what they wrote earlier, and they were shocked–the details were a lot different–in a dorm room instead of the cafeteria, who they were with, what class they were going to, the whole bit. It’s the same with trauma–believe it or not, social rejection acts the same way in our bodies – the same chemicals get dumped into your body. While you may think not a big deal, your teenager or younger child is freaking out. They are reacting AS IF to trauma even though it was “just” a social rejection. Make sense? We need to be so much more sensitive to our kids and what they’re feeling–their lens, not our own. And lastly is confirmation bias – we believe what we already believe. We’re magnets for information that confirms the stuff we already believe, and that goes for EVERYTHING – • worldview • politics • religion • food • how you see yourself Tell yourself, “I’ll never lose weight!” and your brain will happily step up to prove it by giving you the brilliant idea to go after your kids’ goldfish crackers in the pantry to confirm it. So how do we fix it? 1. Do a brain dump, and write out If/Then scenarios. 2. Create strong, counterintentional statements using I AM statements. 3. Look for space to create possibility. Roy Bennett, author of The Light in the Heart, says, “Time doesn’t heal emotional pain; you need to learn to let it go.” 4. Take inventory – what do you believe about: possessions, your home, habits, family, friends, obligations, goals, relationships, commitment, values, etc. 5. Write out your inventory and beliefs, and redline 20-30% of it … it’s not serving you! We cannot leave our thoughts to chance – it’s like asking a toddler to go gas up a car. Our “soundtracks,” as Jon Acuff says, are one of the most persuasive forms of fear because the more you listen to it, the easier it becomes to believe it. I’ll leave you with this quote from Acuff: “If you can worry, you can wonder. If you can doubt, you can dominate. If you can spin, you can soar!” |
