A Simple Idea To Change Your Thoughts To Change Your Mental Health
Do your thoughts impact your mental health? There is certainly no shortage of external factors—friends, family, stress, and pressure caused by school or jobs. You get the idea. But what about what’s happening on the inside?
Your thoughts.
You probably know that toxic thoughts can drag you down, make depression worse, and define your self-worth. But what about the opposite? Can your thoughts create a higher level of mental wellness? Can your thoughts improve how your brain works and improve your overall mental health?
Well, the short answer is yes.
You have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. So you can change your thoughts.
Yet the problem is that most of us don’t really think about what we are thinking about. For most of us, our everyday thoughts are on autopilot. In fact, you can’t go three seconds without thinking. So even if you don’t know what you’re thinking, you are. Now, normally, that’s a good thing. But it becomes a problem when some of those autopilot thoughts are toxic.
There is an idea in therapy and mental wellness that while you have thoughts, you are not your thoughts. I know that sounds a little goofy and unnecessarily complicated. So, let me rephrase the idea. Let’s assume, for example, that you had a large project at work with a deadline looming or perhaps just completed an important exam at school. Everyone around you believes you will succeed—get the promotion, pass the test, etc. But you believe you will fail. If you believe it deeply enough, you will start to convince yourself that you will, in fact, fail. However, despite the thought of failure, it doesn’t make you a failure.
Make sense? Good. So you can see how this could have detrimental effects on your overall mental health if you were to start believing negative nonsense about yourself. The good news is that the opposite is also true. Believe in enough good things, and you could actually improve your mental health.
Changing your thoughts starts here.
We cannot suddenly and automatically change how or what we think. It takes three weeks or more to develop a new habit or routine. But it takes more than two months to instill a lasting thought or habit on autopilot. Deciding to begin a new exercise routine does not automatically create a new habit. It takes time and repetition. Likewise, the determination to stop a bad habit is more than sheer willpower and hope.
The same is true of our minds. From the moment we are born, we learn how to navigate the world around us. How to cross a street, drive a car, follow directions, and file our taxes. We learn how to treat people with respect and resolve conflict. We learn how to act in school, at work, and with friends. We even know when to tell a great joke and when to bite our tongue.
Our minds have to learn how to navigate our inner world, see it clearly, make sense of it, and wade through its confusing waters. We need to discover how our mind interprets feelings, how we see the future, and even our awareness of self. But perhaps most importantly, we must learn to consider the thoughts streaming through our consciousness. In other words, being keenly aware of what you're thinking about. This seems simple enough, but have you ever really sat back and thought about what you think about?
Thinking About What You're Thinking About
Have you ever thought about the idea of thinking about what you are thinking about? The ancient philosopher Plato described it as the mind talking to itself. Teachers use this idea to develop and implement a strategy with students called metacognition. It helps students become more aware of their thought processes to help them analyze ideas, ask better questions, and work more collaboratively with others.
You are, of course, thinking all the time. Most of those thoughts are unconscious and firing at more than four hundred billion actions per second. Roughly 90-99% of our brains are on auto-pilot, all day, every day. But the rest of our thinking is the part we need to focus on. This is what you say, what you do, the questions you ask, how you perceive the external world around you, and how you react to it.
Even if you ignore it, everything is first a thought. Everything we do and say is stored in our unconscious by what we think and feel. That includes every positive thing we think and experience and anything toxic or harmful.
So, if you’re going to change the toxic, life-sucking thoughts to brain-building positivity, then you need first to build an awareness of your act of thinking.
Changing how we think requires us to choose what we think about.
Let's go back to what Plato said. Your mind is talking to itself. So what are you telling yourself? Because what you're thinking matters. And it matters more than you might think.
Research has shown that our thoughts have a direct impact on our DNA. For example, suppose you constantly focus on negative thoughts about the future or others' thoughts about you. That kind of toxic thinking can change the wiring of your brain in a negative direction, adding unhealthy amounts of stress to your mind and body, which can also affect your body's natural healing capacities and wear down your brain. But while the research revealed the damaging effects of toxic thinking, the opposite also proved true. The adverse effects on our DNA were reversed by feelings of love, joy, appreciation, and gratitude.
Our thoughts matter; therefore, what we choose to think about matters.
Work on this one skill to start changing how you think.
Take an extra 10 seconds to think. Before you speak or react to a situation, take a moment and think. And trust me, this is harder than you might think. This is one of the skills I am constantly working on with my kids—teaching them to think about what they are thinking about. It leads them to consider what they are currently thinking about and ask if it is true, gracious, loving, and kind. This simple reminder helps us control our thoughts and reactions to the world around us. But this practice is not automatic. It must be repeated time and again.
Do it enough over a long enough period, and the new thought is moved to the unconscious part of your thinking. It becomes part of your auto-pilot thoughts and actions. All that focused, dedicated, and repeated practice you consciously put into the learning process over time creates a strong thought network.
It's easy to believe we don't matter, that others don't love us, that we aren't good enough, smart enough, or deserve the good things we have. It's easy to allow our thoughts to wander into a sea of confusion and negative what-ifs—perpetually waiting for something terrible to happen. When we believe the lies we are told and repeat them to ourselves repeatedly, they are buried and solidified deep in our subconsciousness. We begin to react to those lies on autopilot. We start to live as if those lies were true.
The solution, in part, is developing the skill of thinking about what you're thinking about and, in other words, developing the skill to think the right thoughts. Thinking the kinds of thoughts that build up, not tear down. Thinking the kind of thoughts that breathe life, give us confidence, and remind us that we matter and have a purpose.
