Do you want to know how to change old negative patterns of thinking?

We’ve been looking at changing the layer between belief and action – our thoughts, so we can overcome our current mental resistances to change. In psychology they call the intrusive thoughts that arise whenever we try to make a change or face a new and challenging experience, ‘resistances’.

Weight training is called ‘resistance training’. You have to push past the resistance of the weight, going beyond what your muscles are used to doing, to increase their current size and ability. To push past your mental resistances, those boundaries that have kept us where we are, and are preventing us from going further, we need to take control.

We may believe we have no power over what we think, but that isn’t true. It’s just a muscle most of us haven’t used much – our will. We do not need to live under the control of our every thought and whim. We can choose to replace those old thoughts and desires with new ones.

First we need some new ammunition. We need to have a list of new thoughts that can counteract the old ones. You may need to take time to jot down the resistance phrases that are currently running through your mind and think up opposite ones to replace them.

Have a list of new positive statements that you say out loud to yourself morning and night until you really feel a change. It helps to use as much emotion and enthusiasm as you can while you say these out loud. Pretend you’re an actor if you have to. You may not feel the truth in the statements now, but acting it makes you feel it. I know this from being in plays where I really ‘become’ the character.

Also, throughout the day, as negative thoughts arise, combat them with your new ammo. It takes about 3 seconds, after a thought happens, to identify it, decide to change it and reverse it by thinking an opposite, positive, enabling thought. You are the boss of your thoughts! You are in control, not them!

Use your will and take charge of what’s going on in your head. Daily put lots of good input into your brain, and beware the garbage the media and other negative people are spewing regularly! If someone else says something negative to you, treat it as a resistance thought and repeat a positive one in your head to defeat it. Don’t ever agree with it! If they say you can’t, you say “I Can!” and “I Will!”

I learned a lot of this from books by Norman Vincent Peale. I encourage you to read anything of his that you can get your hands on. The man is a master at the ‘science’ of faith!