Change your thoughts – Change your life.
The average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day! Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before. (2005, National Science Foundation).
Our internal dialogue affects how we feel, and thereby significantly affects our blood pressure, heart, and alters the very biochemistry of individual tissues at the farthest extremities of our bodies(1985, University of Maryland School of medicine).
The quality of our existence rests on the quality of our internal communication.
In this article, you will learn to manage your thoughts, recondition your mind and begin to transform your life.
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Why do we have negative thoughts?
Although it feels like the voices in your head are a part of you, they are actually largely influenced by the external world and what others have said to us. In that sense, they do not fully belong to you: you do not own your thoughts. They are a product of the interactions with our environment as much as our own creation. We adopt “global thoughts” as well as the perceptions of others, then make them our own without critical evaluation. They have become a reflex, a conditioning of your mind, and can be hard to over-ride.
We unconsciously get conditioned by our environment: Our parents, friends and other social circles, our culture, our religion, and other social and economic conditions. Every thought that you have had includes what you have both the external stimulus of (what you have heard, seen, understood and other external perceptions) as well as how you felt about it. You are culturally conditioned by all systems of thought – we all are!
As a result, we create ideologies, and so called universal truths which have no basis in reality, yet affect us.
Why aren’t we doing anything about it?
‘’Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?’’ – Rumi, Persian poet and Sufi master.
Deepak Chopra hypothesises that the reason for this is due to our ‘prison of negative thinking’. If you are in a real prison, you can see the bars, but with the hypnosis of social and cultural conditioning, you are in a prison with no walls, so you don’t realise you are in a prison, so you have no desire to escape. If you learn to escape, you will discover the true mind and true self, who you really are and you would be free. So, in his words, ‘’don’t be bamboozled by the world of social conditioning!’’
How to recondition your mind for success
To illustrate how you can recondition your mind, I’m going to tell you about Liz (name changed due to confidentiality). Liz was CMO of a large organisation but suffered from ‘impostor syndrome’ – the feeling that we don’t deserve our role and a fear of being found out. Early on in her career, a person in authority, the CEO of a company where she was working at the time, told her that she lacked commercial acumen. Albeit not true overall, and relating to only one incident, Liz internalised this to such an extent that it became her ‘inner critic’ thought, even when she reached CMO level. Only once she came to recognise this thought, it’s origin and began to critique it, could she effectively move on.
So the first step to get out of this ‘prison’ is to analyse and evaluate your thoughts, to know that the voices inside your head are not always true. When Liz was told she lacked commercial acumen, the comment was subjective and based on just one incident, yet it stuck and influenced how she behaved, with her avoiding commercial challenges and in turn stifling her growth: she was playing the role she had been assigned and it was impacting her ability to progress in the organisation.
Her transformation happened when she realised that this was not who she was. She realised her past was not her future.
So start to notice your thoughts and know that you have the ability to control and change your thoughts. This is based on science. Dr Joe Dispenza explains and shows evidence of how thinking in new ways, as well as changing beliefs, can literally rewire one's brain. When we truly change our mind, there is physical evidence of changes in the brain.
See Joe Dispenza's Ted talk video here:
We are naturally predisposed to getting stuck in the negatives. Whilst our ‘inner critic’ intends to protect us, it sometimes gets out of control and needs to be brought into balance with wisdom from our ‘inner champion.’ It’s critical to hear from your ‘inner champion,’ because according to Martin Seligman, we need a ratio of at least 5:1 positive to negative thoughts to be happy!
We need to exercise this thinking like a muscle. Doing it regularly and often to create a new habit.
Begin by first observing your thoughts, like observing busy traffic on a motorway.
If a negative or limiting thought catches your attention, rather than avoid or ignore it, get your ‘inner champion’ to ask yourself:
Is the thought true?
How am I so sure that this is true?
Is this thought limiting me?
How can I go beyond this limitation?
What thought is more empowering?
This diminishes it’s strength and influence, and you can then release it effectively.
‘’Ask yourself, who am I in all this thought traffic? What you truly are is the immeasurable potential of all that was, all that is, and all that will be’’ – Rumi, Persian poet and Sufi master.
Words are powerful. Notice how you speak to yourself. Would you speak to a friend this way?
Words have power. Notice how you feel when you hope for something vs. expecting it. When you hope for something, the outcome could be good or bad - you feel helpless, the outcome is out of your control. . Your brain doesn’t know which one to focus on, but when you expect something, all your energy gets focused on achieving that outcome and that’s powerful. So choose your words wisely.
So, are you ready to take back control and transform your thinking?
Remember, for change to happen and to last, it needs to start from the “core”, with your values and beliefs, it needs to be meaningful for you and become embedded into a new habit.
It’s about moving from passive to active learning, for a real, lasting transformation, reconditioning you for peak performance by replacing your old limiting beliefs and behaviours with new, high-performance ones, working on reducing your weaknesses and building on your strengths over time.
This is what makes Core Fusion Executive Coaching unique: we start at the core, leverage your unique strengths and remove the interferences holding you and your team back, so you can reach a higher, more sustainable level of performance, both in your personal and professional life.
My unique approach combines 18 years of international corporate blue-chip experience with first- hand director level experience (where I was ranked within the CMO top 50 as well as 2017 CXO Marketing leader of the year), augmented by a certification from the top executive coaching training organisation, the IECL, this gives me the unique ability to understand, coach and mentor through complex business challenges and systems. I have lived through the same challenges and can help you speed up your learning curve and effectiveness.
Get a taste of your full potential: Core Fusion Executive Coaching offers a FREE 60-minute initial discovery consultation. Sign up for your free session today.
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(c) 2018 Core Fusion Executive Coaching
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