Think About What You Think About

By Sandy Turney

Think about what you think about.  Weird suggestion, huh?  But….have you ever done it?  Have you ever paid attention to what goes through your head?  Have you ever stopped and listened to yourself?

For some reason, I woke up one morning with that question on my mind.  I laid in bed thinking about the question and trying to answer it.  These were my thoughts:  ‘Why do I want to even get up today?  I don’t have anything to contribute.  I’m not happy about the way I look.  I’m fat and nothing I put on makes me look decent.  I try to be a good person and positive, but I fail 15 minutes after I get to work.  No one can see God in me.  How can they?  My mouth opens up and before I know it my thoughts are out in the open and I can’t take them back.’  The thoughts running through my head alone could depress me enough on a good day.  And that is interesting, because I think these thoughts often, whether I’m in a depressed state or not.

My pastor once said in a sermon that we have 50,000 thoughts per day, and 85% of them are negative.  I have also heard for every negative comment you say or hear it takes 7 positive ones to cancel that one out.

So now, think about what I said.  I counted them and there were 8 negative things I thought before I even got out of bed in less than a 5 minute period.  So it would take 56 positive thoughts just to cancel out those 8 negative thoughts from those first 5 minutes of the morning.  Now, how many of us really tell ourselves positive things?  Do you answer yourself with something positive when you say or think something negative?  I tried it one morning.  It was pretty difficult!

It took me years of therapy to be able to hear positive things from people.  It took more time to be able to say something nice about myself.  But you know what?  God doesn’t make junk!!!!  We all are ‘beautifully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14 NIV).  There are qualities about each of us no one else has.  If this is something difficult for you to do, I understand.  But I challenge you to look in the mirror each morning and say at least one positive thing about yourself.  But you have to say it out loud.  Then when a negative thought comes across your mind, repeat the positive thing you said to yourself earlier in the day.  Start small.  Start simple.  For example, ‘I have pretty eyes’; ‘my hair looks good today’; ‘I am a kind person’……

Each of us is important and is worth positive thoughts and words!!!!!

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