You are always thinking. There is no time when you are not processing thoughts, even when you are sleeping. With the ability to now do the research, it has been shown that we think over 60,000 thoughts in a single day. Most of them are repeats from the day before and the day before that. Most of them are negative, usually negative thoughts about yourself, others and the world in general. You are a master at thinking.
What kind of thoughts have you mastered? Are they helping you to go toward what you want or away from it? The quality of your thoughts creates the quality of your life. You don’t have to be held hostage by thoughts that don’t feel good. You have the ability to replace the thoughts that cause you to feel unhappy, stressed out, anxious, worried and fearful, with the kinds of thoughts that feel much, much better.
Your role to play is to notice how you feel. Feelings let you know the quality of your thoughts. They are a guidance system installed in us (like a GPS) to alert us to which way we are headed, either toward or away from what we want more of what we want that feels good in our lives. You can tell the difference between the way an unhappy thought feels compared to a happy thought. The feeling is your guide. Use it.
To help you, below is a tool called the Emotional Guidance Scale I use in my coaching that shows the emotions (feelings) that bring you up and the ones that bring you down.
Take out a piece of paper and think of something that you want to be different. Write out- ‘I feel_________ about ______(fill in the blanks with the emotion words that describe a circumstance, person, or difficulty) using the chart.
Next, write out how you want to feel. This will help you to begin to think new thoughts. This is very important. The kinds of thoughts that you think about everything are like seeds that will root, grow and multiply. If they are negative, you need to pull them up and out and plant the new positive feeling thoughts you want to think so they can multiply. What you focus on becomes more, whether positive or negative. You are always at choice.
You have the power to raise the quality of your thoughts with daily practice. Just keep noticing how you feel and remind yourself that you are receiving guidance. Keep replacing the thoughts that you no longer want to control your life with the ones you want. It will become easier as you keep practicing. This is how we can change our lives without needing the outside world to change. As you change, life changes.
