The thoughts racing through your mind throughout the day, often referred to as your internal chatter, belong to you! And, although it may appear to “just happen,” the reality is that you are the one generating the thoughts. Those thoughts are heavily influenced by circumstances and conditions, but you still own them. You may have thoughts pop into your mind you did not consciously plan, again heavily shaped by internal and external influences, but the decision to entertain or persist with those thoughts belongs only to you! At the end of the day, they are just thoughts and can be easily dismissed. However, those thoughts; the things you are saying to yourself over and over are not just thoughts, but actually form the basis of your beliefs. What you believe in life ends up being the life you are experiencing! Your success or your failure, in any category of life, is found amongst that infernal, internal chatter!
It would be well worth your time to begin paying attention to the things you are saying to yourself! Notice the thoughts going through your mind while you are speaking with someone or when you are interacting in a group. Are you able to engage a person with your full attention and heart or are you simultaneously wading through your own thoughts spewing out negative things about you, from you, to you? Most people’s internal chatter is horrifically negative to the point of being an enemy or a personal adversary. None of us would knowingly choose the option of being mean and harsh with ourselves on purpose. I mean, if I don’t have my own back, who does? Instead, we are living in a world fueled and directed by fear and negativity. We are engulfed in subtle messages of inadequacy and how we don’t measure up. We are drowning ourselves in the hidden messages of electronic media, carefully crafted to occupy our every waking moment. You thought the TV was a brilliant mass “idea” marketing machine? Well, add in the explosive rise of social media and you end with a nation of captured minds, fully influenced night and day to generate thoughts in a specific, negative direction… It’s pretty incredible to recognize, but devastating in its effect on our minds.
In addition to starting a serious quest to pay attention to what your internal chatter is saying to you in public, also believe to hear and recognize what it (you) are saying to yourself in private. For example, I began to notice a habit I had of saying, “It’s okay” to myself throughout a day. As I started in earnest to pay attention, I realized that I was speaking and entertaining accusatory thoughts towards myself. In other words, through negative self-accusation and internalized messages regarding my own worthiness, I was actually agreeing with and accepting those thoughts to the point where I was telling myself I was okay in response to me telling myself I wasn’t okay! Do you see what I’m getting at here? YOUR INTERNAL CHATTER IS YOUR OWN THOUGHTS! Your thoughts are not the devil and telling a thought to “shut the fuck up” is simply telling yourself to… The devil certainly is the source of evil in the world and the organizer of the “idea marketing” I referred to earlier, but his work is accomplished by influencing your thinking infinitely more than by some kind of imagined direct occupation! It is a slavery of epic proportion! What could work better than physically holding a slave in bondage? Get them to hold themselves in bondage by the wrong thoughts they’re rehearsing to themselves all day long!
How many people do you know that are struggling with their self-image? How much do you wrestle with your own self-image? How easy is it to move you off-center into doubt or concern about who you really are or what you can actually accomplish? Self-image is nothing more than the ideas you entertain about yourself, that you have been telling yourself since you were a small child. None of that stuff; those thoughts, had any basis in some type of truth, but rather messages you chose to believe were true. My mother convinced me I was exceptionally smart and I believed her (and yes, I am – smile). Sure there are genetic factors, tendencies, inborn strengths and weaknesses, but all are overridden by your beliefs, more specifically what you believe to be true about yourself. Although it’s not easy, you can change your self-image. You change it by changing what you are saying to yourself throughout the day. You can start to challenge thoughts instead of accepting them as true! Above all, stop berating yourself and rehearsing bad, negative stuff about yourself! Stop tearing yourself down. Cease searching for evidence that the garbage you’ve been dumping on yourself is somehow true. It is, for you, no more true than the good things you say about yourself. The only difference being that the good stuff we tell ourselves actually benefits our lives! I mean, good Lord, who are you to pass such severe judgment on your own life? That is exactly what you do every time you cooperate with the darkness by persisting in thoughts that only serve to hurt you. You’re not “just being honest” you are being deceived with your own personal detriment and suffering in mind.
All that craziness besieging your brain during all waking hours, belongs to you and comes from you. You can control your thinking. You can decide what you will and will not say to yourself. And, you can damn sure change anything about yourself even if it is who you’ve been all of your life. You have a right to cultivate a mind, your mind, your one and only mind, to be your ally and not your enemy! You deserve a break from the great “idea marketing” machine for a chance at your own ideas about life. You can have success and satisfaction and fulfillment like you’ve only dreamed of once you finally learn to get on your own side, where God is…
Hey, it’s your internal chatter, but it’s also yours to change for the better!
Just some good thoughts…
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