It's ALL In Your Head

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I am struck by the profundity of Today's Quote on the sidebar by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, "Change your thoughts and you will change your world."

His words ring true. All a person needs to do is to sweep the negative perspective from his mind and replace it with a different one.

You've heard it all before: You can be anything you want to be. You can succeed in life if you allow yourself to leave behind victimhood. It's ALL in your head.

Well, it really is! And these words are not surprising to those who have actually turned bad experiences into learning ones. Bad lives into good ones. To those who have lived in the worst of circumstances, but believed that "things happen for a reason." And to those who have actually turned their lives around by changing what they automatically think.

Negative thinking is nothing more than a bad habit that makes not taking action and responsibility for ourselves an easy out. We've all been there. Especially when we are young, think we know it all, and can't believe what the rules are that we face but wish we didn't.

Naturally, we go off, usually with "friends" and do something stupid and then get ourselves into trouble.

But youth isn't the only time we get ourselves into trouble. How many stories have we heard about children who had a parent who thought the rules of marriage are too binding and that an extra marital office affair wouldn't hurt anyone? How many of those children didn't get "hurt?" You know the answer. Not a single one ducked that bullet.

Each parent thought they could do something stupid and rationalize it away and not face the rules if they thought they weren't "happy" or not "in love enough" with their spouse after the years pass by. They wish they could go into denial and not face the rules (for them the marital contract and vows they once made) but, in fact, they do. Ask anyone who's chosen this path. It gets real complicated.

Natural reaction is to not want to deal with the "trouble" -- the consequences of whatever our stupidity got us into.

Or we blame the rules--without which there would be no trouble. Or we look for someone else who did something worse and throw them under the bus, hoping we can appease "the crocodile" and that it will "eat us last." (Winston Churchill quote paraphrased)

What really works is to stop, look at ourselves, realize that it just might be our own actions that got us where we are--and is keeping us there. And that, on this bleak morning after, only we can change where we are.

The way to break a this bad-thinking habit, which is what it actually is - just a habit, is to get ourselves something meaningful to tell ourselves when we feel ourselves going down this road.

We might even need to write it down and pull it out as a reminder when our common sense is off running amuck again. It could be a thought, Bible verse, quotation, or mantra of sorts that will allow us an immediate mind switch from one of those thoughts, you know the ones that take us down "pity road," to a place where we can see the unending right-thinking choices we really do have.

If we can master this technique and develop new habits, we will have changed our lives totally. Relationships become deeper, life reveals more beauty to us, and each day feels like a brand new gift. We will have given ourselves the power to be, think, and do things we know are good and that will reflect back on us with that same goodness.

Twelve step programs are built on this general idea. "Own your actions by guiding your thoughts in the direction you want your life to go." The idea is not new and has been called lots of things (self-actualization, self-fulfilling prophesy, the "secret", many others).

The real secret is believing that we are going to have to "answer" for our behavior at some point--now or later--to the people in our lives and ultimately THE higher power. And that we will feel better being and doing "good" than we feel when doing bad or "evil." If we can't buy into a belief like this, we can spend our lifetimes wafting in the breeze without a rudder (to mix my metaphors). But you get the idea. A life without a guidebook, is a life without purpose.

Still the truth is that we are happier in this life if we believe in a higher power and in personal responsibility and we know this is true at some level whether we admit it or not. So the choice - again - is ours alone. It is what Dr. Peale meant when he said, "Change your thoughts and you will change your world."