Here are my first two tips to help you evaluate your behavior patterns and begin taking control of your thoughts and attitudes:
#1 – Don’t Play the Blame Game. I learned long ago that if someone is accusing you of being the problem, it’s often their shame speaking so don’t buy into it. I also learned that if everyone is offering you the same criticism, it’s time to drop the defenses, listen and learn!
Excuses and defensive behavior are often coping mechanisms we develop to avoid real issues. You can take responsibility for your thoughts and therefore take responsibility for your actions! How do you begin? Identify 3 areas of life where it is time to stop making excuses!
#2 – Identify Negative Cycles. Do you find yourself constantly repeating the same negative behaviors? Have you asked yourself why? Repetitive cycles are often the result of unresolved issues or judgments toward ourselves or others.
For example, you might say, “My mother was an alcoholic, I will never be like her!” Yet, you find yourself adopting her behaviors! Through forgiveness, you free yourself of pain, anger and judgments, and you shift your focus from yesterday’s hurt to today’s possibility!
You might ask, how do I forgive? We have a model for forgiveness—Christ, who lived a sinless life and chose to forgive those who sinned against Him. Accept His forgiveness and discover its great power! Ask yourself: Do I have repetitive negative behaviors that require forgiveness? Write them down and start forgiving today!
Did you know that the average person has between 25,000 and 50,000 thoughts per day? And much of your behavior depends on your thoughts and attitudes! While playing athletics, I developed a saying to motivate me each morning: “I am alive, alert, awake, joyous and enthusiastic about life!”
Although I had to rise each morning at 5 am for basketball practice, I would lie awake most nights with aching joints due to my rapid growth. How did I get up each morning? I programmed myself! I learned that getting control of my thoughts allowed me to control my actions!
Behavior is defined as the way in which one conducts oneself, especially toward others. It is also defined as the way in which a person responds to a particular situation or stimulus. By evaluating our behavior patterns, both to internal and external stimuli, we discover new levels of self-awareness!
For the next two days I will be sharing some tips that can help you take control of your thoughts and attitudes and move toward a healthier you!
Are you ready for greater mental clarity? Let’s look at 4 powerful exercises to increase self-awareness and eliminate mental chatter!
STEP #1: Order Your World! In her bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo offers insight into releasing ourselves from the clutter that produces chaos. Her how-to book has gained traction globally by helping people reform their own spaces—physically and mentally. In other words, decluttering your space helps declutter your mind. Today: find time to organize. You WILL be less stressed and more focused!
STEP #2: Think Like A Child. It is proven that a child’s brain is flexible and adaptable. Children can quickly change their viewpoint. “When people begin thinking like a child, they see a fresh perspective,” says Jack Uldrich, bestselling business author. “They learn to step back and view problems, people and things from a completely different point of view.” Ponder these questions: As a child, what did you dream you would become? What toys or childhood activities did you most enjoy? Often seeds of greatness start in childlike attitudes.
STEP #3: Learn To Meditate. Biblical meditation provides a clear voice in your life that helps delete the mental chatter, focus your thoughts and identify your pathway. It is pondering and reflecting on what God’s word says about you! The Holy Scripture says, “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” The Psalmist said, The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He refreshes my soul. Begin Now: Ponder these 2 scriptures—they will produce peace for today and confidence for your future!
STEP #4: Identify Your Internal Conversation. According to psychologists, each of us conducts a conversation with ourselves known as “self-talk.” Positive internal dialogue can generate favorable expectation, while negative internal dialogue raises stress. The Reality: Negative thinking produces mental clutter. The Remedy: Take a mental inventory! It brings order to your mental world. Learn to capture and order your thoughts on paper! Begin today: Write down 5 optimistic thoughts about your life and surroundings!
Scriptures: Jeremiah 29:11, Psalm 23
If you have any unforgiveness in your heart, or if you’ve been unable to forgive yourself, right now you can pray this with me: “Jesus I ask you to take the pain that is in my heart. Help me forgive the people who have violated me. Forgive me Lord for those whom I have violated. I ask you right now to forgive me and to cleanse me and to come into my heart to help my emotions, bring your divine love to my heart today. Release me from my sin and restore my hope.”
Now if you prayed this prayer I want you to know your heart has been opened to the love of God, and He will be that healing salve that you need when you face tragedy and unforgiveness.
Go to my website today, www.LeslieMcNulty.com and look for our resources. You can find new hope for new life today and resources that will strengthen you on your course to recovery.
Perhaps you can think of someone that you have wronged? Or perhaps someone has wronged you? If you have not allowed yourself to forgive you may be affecting your health! Are you an angry person? Have you considered the negative impact anger has on your health? According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, when you’re chronically angry you’re in a fight-or-flight mode—which can have effects on blood pressure and heart rate.
Forgiveness can get you out of the anger mode and eliminate harmful toxins that may be damaging your body. When you learn to forgive, your heart will thank you—because forgiveness has been shown to lower blood pressure. A 2011 study of married couples in the journal of Personal Relationships, showed that when the victim in the situation forgave the other person, both experienced a decrease in blood pressure.
Today we continue with the last three steps toward discovering emotional forgiveness.
Step # 3 is to become ALTRUISTIC or selfless, by giving the gift of forgiveness. Jesus Christ gave the greatest gift of forgiveness when He took our transgressions upon His body and died for us! He did nothing wrong, but God so loved us that He sent His Son to pay the price for our sin.
Christ’s words spoken on the cross ring out through eternity, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” Isn’t this ultimately the voice of unconditional forgiveness, and doesn’t this give us the power to forgive? Sometimes in order to offer the gift of forgiveness we must remember or value an instance when someone else forgave us.
Once you make the decision to offer the gift of forgiveness, Worthington suggests Step #4, committing to public forgiveness. This can be done through writing in a journal, telling a friend, creating a certificate of forgiveness or even telling the individual that wronged you.
Step #5 is to HOLD ON to forgiveness. Psychologists say that forgiveness is not forgetting, but rather, forgiveness is a decision. Memories of the wrong incurred and the associated negative feelings will arise, but hold on to forgiveness! Remind yourself that you made a decision to forgive!
Scripture: Luke 23:34
As we talked about yesterday, today we will look at the first two steps toward discovering emotional forgiveness.
Step #1 requires you to RECALL the events and hurt as accurately and objectively as possible. I would liken this to accurate thinking—using our minds, not our emotions, to correctly understand and evaluate.
We don’t need to recall the event just to remember we are a victim or to punish the aggressor with our words. We recall to gain perspective. We can use our intellect to control our emotions, allowing us to control our actions and, ultimately, forgive.
The Bible tells us to “Bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” Objectively taking our thoughts captive allows us the power to move forward.
Step # 2 is to EMPATHIZE. Try to understand what happened from the point of view of the person who wronged you. No one would suggest that this is easy, but by considering the motivations or short-comings of the other person, we may be able to replace negative emotions with positive emotions.
Dostoyevsky states, “Nothing is easier than to condemn the evildoer, nothing is harder than to understand him.”
Empathy is the process of putting yourself in the other person’s chair. Worthington, by looking at his mother’s killer as young, reactionary, and out of control, was better able to understand his mother’s senseless tragedy.
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 10:5
Psychologist Everett Worthington is an author and a specialist on instructing people in “REACH,” a 5 step process for forgiveness.
Worthington knows something about forgiveness. He experienced the unthinkable when his 78-year-old mother was sexually violated and beaten to death with a crowbar. According to an article published by WWBT in Richmond, Virginia, Worthington states that “this was a particularly horrific scene. One that I just never will forget.”
Adding to his difficulties, Worthington’s brother could not get the image of his mother’s death out of his head, and a few years later he committed suicide. Worthington says not only did he need to forgive his mother’s killer, he also had to forgive himself for not being able to help his brother!
Although I am not a psychologist, I have seen marriages broken by infidelity, restored through forgiveness. I have witnessed criminals find self-forgiveness and the ability to move forward in life, and I have seen the abused released from the horrors of cruelty through forgiveness.
Worthington writes in his book, “Forgiveness and Reconciliation” that he was able to forgive the youths that committed the horrible crime against his mother in just over 30 hours. How? By working through his 5-Step Process which I will outline for you in my next two blogs.
If I were to put a bunch of apple seeds into your hand you probably could get a picture of what could be produced from them. The same is true if I filled your hands with turtle eggs.
If I were to put the seed of a human into your hand, try and think of the possibility!
We look at the Japanese bonsai tree with its artistic, dwarfed size and shape and admire it. Most of humanity has gone through an unseen process like the bonsai tree. Humans have been restricted, confined and twisted to a shape of another’s liking. It could have been through religion, family criticism, personal inferiority and fears or the example of others that you feel dwarfed and twisted, but Jesus came to set the captives free. Each of us has an ability to dream of the possibilities in our future. It is a risk to go beyond the parameters, but no one will ever know how high you can grow until you allow yourself to reach! God has put a future in you that reaches into eternity.
Stretch for it today!
Here are some soul-searching questions to direct you toward discovering both the talent you possess, and the talent you are willing to pay any price to develop!
First, ask yourself the all-important purpose questions.
What do I want to do? What am I passionate about? What brings me joy and fulfillment? Am I living my personal values? Sometimes your very first thought is the answer you have been seeking! Liberate the idea that’s in your heart! Write it down! If you do, you will discover that with a little attention the idea will grow!
Belva Davis, the first black TV journalist in the Western United States said, “Don’t be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so.”
Second, ask the vital “What If” Questions to Expand Your Horizon. What would I attempt if I knew I couldn’t fail? Most talent remains undeveloped on the trash heap of If only I had…tried that new job, achieved that degree, written that book. What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail? Think about it. Document your thoughts. Raise your expectations and dare to dream the impossible! You can get out of the box! God-given talent and desires have been placed within you to impact the world for GOOD!
According to success coach, Brian Tracy, “the key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire, not things we fear.” These ‘what if’ questions will help you Identify your fears and expand your boundaries! President Franklin D. Roosevelt is famously quoted as saying, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Third, Ask Others Their Perspective to Gain Insight
Who knows you better than your family and closest friends? Ask a friend, family member or co-worker what they perceive as your strongest characteristic, special gifting or unique ability. Write down the names of at least two people you can consult with.
Self-awareness is having a clear perception of your strengths and your weaknesses. You might be surprised at what you discover when you give others the permission to speak into your world! Remember: People pleasers will tell you what you want to hear. A true friend will tell you what you need to hear!
