Don’t believe everything you think

Change negative thought patterns and live a life of your own design

We are what we think. Our minds are incredibly powerful, as are the belief systems that drive our thinking. This can be both a blessing and a curse, depending on how we harness this power and where we choose to put our energy and focus.

Cell biologist Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., is a pioneer in new research around DNA. In his ground-breaking book, The Biology of Belief, he explains that our perceptions are so powerful that they even have the power to change your genetic make-up. “Your beliefs can and do control your biology,” he writes. “This may sound radical, or even impossible, yet it is this awareness that will lead you to say goodbye to the excuses you’ve unwittingly adopted.”

If our minds are as powerful as all this, how can we best develop them to live balanced, fulfilling lives that bring challenges and opportunities to both our careers and our personal lives? How can we interrogate our beliefs so that we stop leaning on childhood experiences and making excuses for our supposed shortcomings. How can we take control of our lives and stop letting deeply ingrained negative thoughts steer our course?

For a start, says Unisure’s Consultant Psychologist Clare Rudd, we need to take responsibility for our thoughts and our patterns of behaviour

“Emotional strength and honesty is the key to psychological strength and wellness,” Clare explains. “In her book The Myths of Happiness, I love how Sonja Lyubomirsky explains that as human beings we tend to overestimate how intensely a negative life event is going to affect us, as well as how much a positive life event is going to change or even fix everything that we think is wrong in our lives. On the other hand, Sonja also writes about how often we underestimate what experts Gilbert and Wilson call our ‘psychological immune system’ – namely our ability to bounce back from adversity, to acknowledge that we will not always be happy and to learn to deal with difficult emotions when they come.”

As Clare explains, the more aware of our thoughts and emotions we become, the more realistic and resilient we can be about the events that shape our lives, their effect on our lives, and how we deal with them.

Here are 4 steps to follow to start working on your emotional resilience:

STEP 1 – REVERSE NEGATIVE THOUGHTS AND MAKE THEM YOUR AFFIRMATIONS

1. Don’t believe everything you think. We think approximately 40 – 60 000 thoughts a day, and these thoughts are often repeated every day. But is it 100% true all the time?
2. Don’t just accept that it’s going to be difficult for you to change. Again, come back to asking ‘Is it true that it’s going to be difficult?’ The bottom line is that we think thoughts that lead us to a place where we cannot get what we want. We set up the failure mechanism in our own minds.
3. Focus on what the reverse thought is. Set yourself an opportunity for the thing you want to take place to actually happen. Why? Because as soon as you align yourself with the possibility of what you want to happen, you attract it.
4. Make the reverse thought your affirmation. Instead of ‘All things are difficult’, think ‘All things are possible’. Instead of ‘It’s too risky’, think ‘I cannot fail when I have achieved so much’.

As Clare reminds, we generally get what we think about and what you focus your thoughts on. And sadly, by thinking about what we don’t want, we often unwittingly attract it.

STEP 2 – STOP MAKING EXCUSES

 Our brains are neuroplastic. That means that we can change how they’re wired, giving us mental and behavioural flexibility.

Inspired by Dr. Wayne D. Dyer’s book Excuses Begone!, Clare outlines the steps we can follow to start to change self-defeating excuses and thought patterns that may be holding us back in life:

1. Identify behaviours which are self-defeating, but don’t focus on them for too long. This might be that you’re too shy to speak up, you’re overweight, you struggle to manage your anger, or you can’t get along with a family member.
2. Then consider what the pay-offs are for this behaviour. What do you get out of this behaviour? Often you’ll find that it’s either self- sabotaging or invaluable – blaming someone else, being afraid of change, lack of discipline, taking an easy way out, practising psychological avoidance, or choosing the safe path.
3. Develop alternatives and solutions for your self-defeating behaviours. And then work hard at putting them into practice.
4. Lastly, imagine what your life would look like if you couldn’t make the excuses. Visualise living the life you want.

STEP 3 – CHOOSE HOW YOU RESPOND

 Next, take courage from the fact that while we cannot always choose what happens to us in life, we can always control our responses.

In their inspirational book Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton, Peter Fretwell and Taylor Baldwin Kiland document what made the American Prisoners of War imprisoned at the Hanoi Hilton so resilient in captivity, and so successful in their subsequent careers.

Some of the most important lessons that the book and the POWs’ experiences unpack include the following:

1. Focus on what you can control. Even in the most extreme circumstances, you always have one freedom – and that’s the choice of how you respond to a situation.
2. Stay battle fit. Give yourself the best fighting chance in life, whether in a boardroom or in a fight-or-flight situation, by staying physically and mentally fit.
3. Manage your energy. Use your time wisely and productively. Recognise the costs of energy depleting behaviours and take responsibility for changing them.
4. Find what rejuvenates you. Find what it is that replenishes your tank and helps you bounce back and devote time to it.
5. Savour small pleasures and fleeting moments. Strengthen your ability to draw strength, solace, and positivity from the tiniest opportunity.

STEP 4 – EMBRACE AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE AND AWE

 Related to the POWs’ lesson of savouring small pleasures and soaking up the joy of fleeting moments is cultivating your sense of gratitude and awe.

Besides Sonya Lyubomirsky, who writes prolifically about how our ability to experience gratitude has a great influence on our happiness, Clare also recommends delving into the work of Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

He has spent much of his career studying happiness, and in his most recent book, Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder, he speaks about how brief experiences of awe (through music, being in nature, or walking, for example) can make us less narcissistic and less focused on ourselves.

“Awe reinforces that there is something way bigger than ourselves, in much the same way that life and death teach us this,” Clare explains. “Interestingly, money didn’t figure into awe, and nor did consumer purchases or digital technologies.”

“In the Western world,” she continues, “we tend to focus too much on the individual and forget the systems of which we are part. I find this interesting, as lots of research has been done on the fact that in current times, we’ve become too focused on ourselves. But awe, instead, quietens this voice of self. As Keltner writes, ‘awe shifts us from a competitive dog-eat dog mindset to perceive that we are part of networks of more interdependent, collaborating individuals’.”

In closing…

At the end of the day, we owe it to ourselves to do the hard work in understanding what drives us as people and following a path that offers us balance, growth and happiness.

“Go within and develop a friendship with yourself,” Clare advises. “Keep showing up for yourself, because you can become your strongest, calmest, resilient and best self. In my many years as a psychologist, I’ve seen so many people overcome hardships and achieve fantastic things!”

Sources:

• Interview with Unisure Consulting Psychologist, Clare Rudd, April 2023

• Bruce Lipton, The Biology of Belief 10th Anniversary Edition: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles, Hay House Inc, 2016

• Sonja Lyubomirsky, The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t. What Shouldn’t Make You Happy but Does, Penguin Press, 2013

• Dr Wayne Dyer, Excuses Begone! How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits, Hay House Inc, 2009

• Peter Fretwell and Taylor Baldwin Kiland (with Dr. J.P. London and Dr. James B Stockdale), Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton: Six Characteristics of High-Performing Teams, Naval Institute Press, 2009

• Dacher Keltner, Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder, Penguin Random House UK, 2023