Happy Halloween everyone!!
Add up the number of hours that you’ve been awake…got the number? Take that number and multiply it by 2,500. That is the number of thoughts you have had with yourself since you’ve been out of the bed. Now take the same amount of hours and multiply that number by 2,000. That’s how many negative thoughts you’ve had today.
For all of you visual thinkers out there – imagine that one person you know that brings you down the most. This is that person that never has anything positive to say and makes you feel terrible about yourself. Now imagine them walking around with you constantly throughout your day, all while whispering something negative in your ear 2,000 times an hour! That’s a lot of negative thinking! According to studies done on our brains, whether we are talkers or listeners, we are all hearing our own thoughts as we talk to ourselves throughout the day.
Would you consider yourself more of a talker or more of a listener? I am most definitely an introvert and I naturally just listen more than I speak. Don’t get me wrong, I love laughing, sharing and talking with my friends and family, meeting new people and hearing their stories. But, I guess I’m just wired as more of a listener. Listeners and talkers both have their strengths and weaknesses but no one wins when they start believing their own discouraging thoughts.
With an eating disorder, your outside appearance doesn’t always reflect what is going on inside your mind. As I started recovery, people told me I looked better, but my mind was still in a very unhealthy place. It took my mind some time to catch up with my body’s recovery. The only way I was able to move forward and start cleaning out all of the junk in my thought life was to find a standard of positive thinking to hold all of my thoughts up to. The standard I used was Philippians 4:8 – “…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” I soon started filtering my thoughts through this verse. If what I was thinking about myself didn’t match up to this standard, then I knew those thoughts had to go and I knew that I shouldn’t dwell on them.
Now (above)
After a few years of trying to renew my mind and filter my thoughts, I feel like I’m at a good place with what goes on in my mind. Everyone will experience negative thoughts and I still have them at times but now I’m able to see the difference between the truth and the lies. Changing the way you think about yourself takes time and constant effort. Wherever you are in your life, it’s worth it to get control of your thoughts. There is no way to move forward in a positive direction without first having positive thoughts.
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”
– Helen Keller
“You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.”
– Joyce Meyer