Managing Your Thoughts And Words To Empower You

The average person has about 6,200 thoughts per day, yet you can be consumed by certain ones that shape your life. Certain thoughts evoke emotions that can cause you to remain fixated on them, whether good or bad. They are so powerful that they dictate where you focus your energy to. Your thoughts include any and everything from your hopes and dreams to the things you fear to what am I going to eat for lunch.

There are so many things going on in your mind that cause you to bounce from one thing to another and it happens pretty quickly. A song might trigger a memory of great times that you had with a friend that uplifts you, but it could also trigger recalling a bad experience of when you fell off your bike when you see someone riding one. As you have these thoughts, they ultimately affect who you are.

How your thoughts impact you

Because thoughts impact the way you feel it's going influence what you choose to focus your time on. And more time spent on certain thoughts is what you will get closer to. It's where you put more of your energy to. Have you ever noticed the more you think about a certain thing the more you tend to notice it. Like if you have a white Toyota Camry, you’ll tend to notice a lot more as you go about. They have always been around but now your window of focus has been narrowed down to what you've been thinking about. You either unknowingly or knowingly will search out what is occupying your attention.

Whatever mood you are in you seek out evidence to reinforce it. If you are feeling down and constantly thinking about bad things will happen to you, then you will actually be searching for that confirmation and will act to make it happen. You talk yourself into it. And these thoughts of fear trigger stress and anxiety that weigh you down emotionally that produces stress hormones that affect you negatively physically. But it works the same way if you are constantly thinking about the great things that are yet to come. You will constantly be searching for opportunities. This can help explain why people who are resilient are able to overcome setbacks and be better for it. Whatever it is you are searching to affirm your beliefs, you will eventually find.

Understanding your thoughts

Understanding the thoughts you have can help better understand yourself. Many of the experiences that you go through eventually become a memory that affect you. And the more that memory resonates with you the more certain thoughts occur. Many of your experiences are constantly being compared to previous ones you had and there is a tendency to engage in what is familiar whether it is good or bad. If many of your experiences are a disappointment you more than likely to have negative thoughts such as this never works out for me, or I am constantly coming up short. You associate things from what you been through and anticipate the same type of result.

Your past will influence how you feel but it is not a predictor of your future. Simply because it happened before doesn't mean it will happen again only if you continue to do the same thing repeatedly. How you feel does not determine your outcome, but it will affect your behaviors. Your behaviors determine your future. Because of this there is a tendency when you feel good you tend to do good but when you feel bad you tend to do bad.

Your thoughts affect how you feel and how you feel affects how you behave. So if you exhibit the same behaviors of what you did in the past you will tend to get the same results going forward. Unaware of your thoughts and behaviors and you will continue to repeat what you've always known so it makes it feel like the past is a predictor of your future. Understanding this will help you mold your future into what you want.

Once you become more aware of your thoughts you can begin to recognize your thought patterns to see what thoughts help you and which ones hurt you. Generally, much of our thinking operates in a series of patterns so it will start off a thought that is triggered that causes a repeated cycle of that thinking. And once you fall into that cycle it can be difficult to get out of it and the more you're into it, the more it consumes your energy. To prevent going into the pattern of the thoughts that hurt you, understand what triggers them and question why it does that. Find out why it affects you in a certain way.

The more you understand your thoughts and your thought patterns the better you can manage it to find ways to overcome the things that hold you back. Simply suppressing these destructive thoughts may just delay the festering you might go through. Lay it out there and examine it which can be uncomfortable at times.

Identify what thoughts you want to have that align with what you are striving for

To shape the thoughts that you want, elevate what you want and why you want it. You got to know what you need to do to get it and the sacrifices you need to make for it. This can help you provide your own destination and a road map for getting there. When you have reasons for doing something it fuels your fire on how to attain it. Without knowing this you'll be swimming in your own thoughts falling into the same patterns as before.

And as you start to mold the thoughts you want to have, write down your ideal thoughts that evoke emotion which will help ingrain them into you. It helps you physically see what you actually want to think about and it encodes it in your long-term memory. What is great about writing it down is it actually slows down your thinking to transfer your thoughts into reality that's eventually going to affect your behaviors.

And once you identify what thoughts you want to have, evaluate what you are consuming because that will affect your thoughts. Look to make sure that what you're consuming is aligning with those ideal thoughts because if they're not then they're going to be counterproductive to what you're striving for. Read or watch things that are going to reinforce what you're striving for. The more of what you consume is the more of what you become.

Choose your words carefully

One of the biggest things that you can do to ingrain these thoughts that you want is to say it out loud. Saying things out loud is 10 times more powerful than if someone thinks it. And negativity is a multiple of 4-7 more powerful than positive thinking. So if you say something negative out loud it impacts you by 40-70 times more powerfully. Because we are hard wired to pay attention to what is negative so we can know what to avoid we tend to engage in it. And when you say negative things out loud, you ultimately making what you don’t want to happen to actually happen. While you do not have to think positively to get good results, it is highly recommended that you stop saying negative things out loud.

Yes, there will be times when you have negative thoughts such as beating yourself up after failing to reach your goals but avoid saying what you are thinking. Aim to reduce you fighting against yourself. There are so many obstacles you already must face so reduce it by not getting in your own way. Be aware of the words you say because they are so powerful that they eventually become your actions and will develop into habits. Take that power away from the negative and use to your advantage. Essentially it is addition by subtraction.

Consciously be slow to say things out loud especially when things get hard or you get an outcome that was not wanted. Even simple phrases such as here we go again can have an impact on you because now you're going back to what happened in the past to predict what's about to happen now. Say things of great significance that will serve you out loud as it reinforces what you are thinking. It helps motivate you and gain more confidence in yourself because you evoke emotion into your thoughts that bring them to life.

As you say these significant things out loud it, it becomes more comprehendible because it forces you to concentrate on speaking that slows down you thought process as opposed to thinking silently that can cause you to jump from one thought to another quicker. This can be especially useful in solving problems because it can help you break it down into simple forms. A study by Dr. Christopher Atkin found that participants who worked through complex problems out loud compared those solving them silently reduced mistakes by 78%.

As you say these things out loud have your behaviors follow it because it will propel you into making it happen. Your language is the destination of where you are going and your behaviors are the actions you take to get there. Aligning the two allows your skills and conviction to catch up to what you want. This can help you move past the feelings of doubt to allow you to reach great things.

It is natural for that negative self-talk to come about, and it can be really difficult to speak positively about difficult situations that you might be going through. In the times that you feel like this, take a step back and just present the facts of what's going on which can help reduce the emotional connection that you're feeling to the situation. State the problem, the options you have, and figure out what is the best solution for what you're going through.

You want to avoid saying those negative things out loud that you might be feeling that way you do not give it life. This can help you manage your emotions so you can focus on doing your behaviors well that will help you excel at whatever it is you are doing. If you look at people in high pressure situations that have successfully navigated what they were going through many of them experience nervousness and even self-doubt, but they find a way to stay composed, so those emotions do not overtake their concentration.

Some simple things that might be helpful when you're having negative thoughts to help minimize them or at least not say them out loud, use phrases like the things within my control are…, how can I effectively move forward past this…, what do I gain by giving into these destructive thoughts.... Having these ready to go can help you speak the thoughts that you ideally want to come about.

Final thoughts

As you start to incorporate some of these practices, remain vigilant as they're going to take time. The beginning can be difficult but once you get to the point of being committed to it, they eventually become habits. And old habits can be hard to break so strive to set yourself up to live empowered through your thoughts and the words that you speak.