Episode 89: 3 Mental Habits to Improve Your Life
Episode Summary
While we know that deliberately choosing our thoughts and managing our mind is possible and beneficial, it isn’t always easy and sometimes we just let our brain run on default.
In this episode, I’m sharing three mental habits that you can implement to create more control over your thoughts and thereby your entire life experience. These habits will give you more awareness over the things your brain thinks, more power to believe new things, and more authority to stop thinking the things that are getting in your way.
Episode Tools and Questions
I find that even when we know the principles of thought work, it’s easy to just let our brains run the show. We get a little lackadaisical about our mind management. We get tired of doing the work that’s required and we think that it should be easier.
So today, I thought I would give you 3 mental habits that will allow you to have more control over your thoughts and therefore, your entire life experience. If you put these three habits into place in your life, you will be able to manage your mind so much better and that will improve your mental health, your emotional experience, and the results you create in your life.
1. Do Regular Thought Downloads
A thought download is just a really simple writing exercise. You just sit down and spend five minutes (ten at the most) writing down what’s in your head. Downloading your thoughts from your head to paper. Whatever is on your mind is allowed. Just start writing and write for five minutes, one sentence after another, without stopping and without editing and without judging it.
A thought download allows you (as a person separate from your brain) to see the thought your brain is producing. And this one act alone, I promise you will make you feel better and give you more awareness over your power to think differently.
Because Inside our head, the thoughts feel true. Inside our head, the thoughts have power to create emotion. Inside our head, they remain unexamined and they just get to keep creating unexamined, unintentional thoughts in our life.
On paper, they are captured and can be examined. ON paper we can see them for what they are: just words….arranged in sentences in a way that the brain thinks is the best way to stay alive and avoid pain and save energy. That’s it. And when they are captured on paper, then we can purposefully decide if we want to keep thinking them.
And then you can just pick one thought in that paragraph and ask yourself:
- What if it isn’t true?
- What if I didn’t believe this?
- What if the opposite was true? And see how that feels.
2. Always be working on believing something new -
The things that I can choose to believe about my life are really unlimited. That I can believe anything I want about myself or my life if I am willing to work on and build the beliefs. And what I want to tell each of you is that you can believe anything if you are willing to work on the belief. There isn’t a limitation on any of our capacities to belief. But there may be a limitation on our willingness to work on it.
My suggestion is that you always have a thought (that feels unbelievable) that you are working on believing. When you believe that one, puck another one. Always have a new thought you are working on believing and imagine how your life would change if you did, if you were always pushing the boundaries of your thoughts.
Create a list of things you want to believe about yourself, things you wished you believed about your capacity or your ability or who you are, and then just pick one of them. And start to put some time and effort into believing it. Spend some time every day believing it….start with 10 minutes and keep working your way up, spending more time in belief.
Eventually it will become your new belief, the more time you can spend thinking it. Be in charge of what you think about yourself, first for an hour, then for longer. And put your brain to work finding evidence of the new thought.
- How is this true?
- How is this belief true right now?
- And then make your brain go to work proving it true.
3. Don’t let your brain say mean or disparaging things about you
Your brain notices what’s wrong with you and lets you know. But sometimes these thoughts become a habit. What’s a thought you think about yourself often, that doesn’t make you better and is just mean? I want you to draw a line in the sand. Enough’s enough. Don’t let your brain talk to yourself like that anymore.
You set the terms. You set the boundaries. Your brain can’t think anything it wants. You get a say. And you can choose to stop thinking the thoughts that aren’t serving you.
Find the thoughts that are causing the most destruction in your life right now. Find the thoughts that aren’t allowing you to get the things you want or believe the things you want, and draw a line. Say no more. We’re done thinking that. You are in charge.
These three habits will change the experience of your life! Your brain is powerful, but you are more powerful and your ability to create the life you want is unalterable. No one can take that right away from you…not even your own brain!
Episode Notes
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Episode Transcript
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