Of course, you’ve heard the old fitness adage, “You are what you eat.”
Those words certainly ring true if you’re over forty and try to keep up with a subpar diet by hitting the gym extra hard!
Well, I believe that you are what you THINK, too.
Quite simply, our thoughts become our reality.
Of course, this isn’t an original or even new proposition. People have understood this concept intuitively and then in the nascent fields of positive thinking and psychology for a century or more, leading poet Ralph Waldo Emerson to once say, “You are what you think all day long.”
The thought-manifestation connection is also backed up by a preponderance of new research. According to neuroscientists, our decisions, actions, emotions, and behaviors are based on the 95% of brain activity dictated by programming in our subconscious mind.
Therefore, if you can change your thoughts, you can change your life – but it is a process. That process includes increased attention, skewed perception, interpretation through emotion, physical reactions in our bodies to those emotions, and, finally, a manifestation of our behavioral reality.
Easier said than done, I know. I also understand that in these unprecedented times, it’s easy to let negativity and stress permeate our thoughts.
Just turn on the news or scroll through social media, and it’s hard not to become negative, depressed, frustrated, and, of course, angry.
Have you felt that way?
I know I have.
There’s so much information out there, and the speed at which we absorb that information is alarming. (I read somewhere that the average person today takes in more information in one day than the typical person did in their entire lifetime 100 years ago!)
It’s so easy to get pulled into a vortex of negativity, even if we intend to remain about the fray.
For instance, my Sunday riding group has a text chat. The other day, a friend in the group called me out for something I said regarding these unique times.
“Isn’t this a riding group?” he prompted.
Yes, it is. And thank you for reminding me!
With that quick constructive challenge, I knew it was time to take a break from the negative and focus on all the positive around me again.
Because at the end of the day, it’s a decision, isn’t it?
We all make the decision how to feel, act, or treat others, over and over, each and every day.
The problem is when we aren’t conscious of those decisions. What was once a choice becomes a habit and then an automatic default.
There is certainly more good than bad out there for you to fix your attention on. Simply by assuming a state of gratitude, we trigger the long, complex process of re-wiring our brains that end with a new, different (and better) reality.
That DECISION to change your thoughts may be the most important of your life – liberating you to become the person and live the life you truly want.
As Eckhart Tolle so succinctly explained, “If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.”
-J.D.