I was musing the other day about how much our own thoughts about ourselves influence our life for better or for worse. Sometimes we act as if life is just happening to us and we’re along for the ride, so to speak. We are quick to point to circumstances and conditions without really taking any ownership for the thoughts we have been thinking. We feel like we can’t catch a break, yet seldom see ourselves catching a break. It’s as if we believe good things should happen to us without any cooperative thinking associated with it. We carefully scan the horizon waiting for our ship to come in without really considering that it might come in. In fact, we think just the opposite then curse God for our miserable results. It is no marvel that life seems to work this way because no one ever really taught us the powerful effects our thoughts have on our life. If you are lacking in self confidence, instead of blaming your upbringing or the limited resources you had available to you, why not take an honest look at the thoughts you are considering and incubating today. If you find yourself fearful or easily intimidated by people, maybe it’s not them, it’s you. What specific thoughts preceded those interactions? What thoughts have become the default thoughts you think about yourself? Are you kind with yourself or quick to focus on your flaws and anything else that is not quite right about you? Most people would be the latter, not because they want to be that way, but rather because they have learned to think that way. Improper thinking patterns have usually been learned and rehearsed over many, many years. Those negative patterns are not easily dismantled. However, they can be reshaped and reimagined if you are willing to carefully note what it is you think about yourself. What do you think of yourself?

I believe one of the most cruel things the adversary has done to people over the years is to talk them into thinking negative thoughts about themselves. Logic alone would seem to teach that there could not possibly be any value or profit in thinking poorly of your very own self. And, you really haven’t thought it through if you believe thinking that way makes you a better person or humble or something. You show me a person that actually improves by endless self-criticism and I’ll show you someone who isn’t telling you the truth. Focusing in on and obsessing over what is not right about you leads only to more and more discovery concerning what is possibly not right about you. How could it lead otherwise? If you want to get better you have to think better. You have to stop viewing yourself in those long dead images from the past that simply indicated who you were and not who you are today. And here is the simplicity kicker, who you are today or better what you think about yourself today is wholly a function of what you choose to think about yourself. Don’t you see it? You are doing it to you! Young children don’t think this way, that is until the world gets into them. Our job therefore, while we have the privilege of living this life, is to think well of ourselves. We all zig and zag. We are all up one day and down the next. We all make mistakes and sometimes the same mistakes over and over again. It is all part of the human condition. Yet what is not part of the human condition is to cooperate with evil by feeling bad about ourselves all the time or else carefully judging and scrutinizing our every move and motive. It’s like the athlete that starts thinking too much about what he’s doing. Pretty soon his movements become mechanical and whatever skill he has is soon lost. It is only when he is in the “flow” that the magic happens. The same holds true for our lives. Overthinking is a curse. Instead our job with our minds in our own bodies is to think well of ourselves in all circumstances, under all conditions in the moments called now. Our inherent value is not wrapped up in everything we may do wrong or our missteps. And I think if you are honest your good likely outweighs your bad. But, even if it didn’t, nothing will ever improve by continuing in the same negative thinking patterns. You have to be on your own side first before you can ever help anyone else. You have to be able to see good happening for you not because you deserve it but because it is God’s will for your life. If you cannot even picture it happening for you, how could it actually happen for you? God would have to rewrite the laws of life to accommodate you. It is your mind and they are your thoughts. You are the one choosing no matter how bad it has gotten and you still get to choose today. Choose…

The problem with bad habits is that we are no longer aware of what we are doing or choosing. We develop almost automatic responses to things. Yet how many of those responses are good or beneficial? Maybe one consideration would be, are the thoughts I’m thinking helping me or hurting me? Am I on my own side or am I opposing myself? Am I “for me” or against me? Further, if I am working against my own best interests, what or who got to me to get me thinking that way? I can assure you, you didn’t start that way. There likely was a time when you trusted your own judgments and made decisions in accordance with those judgments. Then life and experience said otherwise. We are all learning and growing and evolving. We are all capable of recognizing areas of our lives requiring modifications and we can adjust accordingly. Yet we adjust from a place of love, not from self-loathing. We make changes because we want to make them, not because other people said we have to or tell us we are not good people if we don’t make them. Remember the famous poem, The Man in the Glass?

For it isn’t your father, or mother, or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.

And guess what, you are the one assigning your own verdict. You are deciding. You are the one assigning your own value and you are the one choosing your own so-called lack of value. The only reason you would assign a lack of value to yourself is because someone talked you into it. Someone or better something convinced you of a lie, a multitude of lies. You got deceived. The enemy of mankind arranged circumstances so deftly that he led you to the wrong conclusion. And once he got you there, he solidified that error into your thinking so much so that you continue it all on your own now. This is why God says the arena of competition is your mind. That is where your fight takes place. You win or lose by what you think about the most and if you think poorly of yourself you are losing the fight. You can only win the fight by choosing to think properly, especially when it comes to your own estimation of who you are. God knew how easily we would all fall prey to the devil’s trickery and as such gave us a value that was never dependent upon how good or bad we are. Accordingly, we adopt thoughts concerning who God says we are and not solely upon what we think. We are truly imperfect creatures endowed with goodness from a perfect God. That is love. That is who we really are. Choose differently.

The only way to escape the madness is to learn how to think differently. For goodness sakes, stop opposing yourself. Stop cooperating with that snake. Stop allowing the world to define who you are with its ever changing standards and rules. View yourself in a different light. Be kind and forgiving with yourself. Allow yourself some grace. You are not going to make yourself better by being harsh with yourself. The harder you are with yourself, the harder your heart gets until it cannot feel much at all anymore. Cultivate a soft heart, one that feels and responds. And most of all, “love yourself fiercely, loyally and unapologetically” as the great Jen Sincero said in her book, “You Are a Badass.” Man, if you don’t love you, you’ve got no chance. We have to get to the place that love is our motivation, not fear. God is not angry with you. He sees through all of the darkness. You stop being so angry with yourself. Whatever you did or didn’t do, let it go. Give yourself a fighting chance at life. You only have one go through and you may as well make the journey sublime. You are the one choosing those thoughts, whatever they are. The answer to the question, “what do you think about yourself?” is the difference between joy or misery, peace or instability, love or fear. Oh my friends, you get to choose. Choose wisely. I love you.

Just some good thoughts…