Negative Thoughts

There will be days when the sun rises but your spirit will not.

Mornings where light is spilling in through your windows but inside your shadow is drowning everything else out. Thoughts gather like a storm; always in the back of your mind whispering… “whats the point, you’re not enough, you’ve failed too many times, no you shouldn’t, no you can’t,” but I am here to tell you: YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS!!

I get this question a lot in sessions; “how do I change a thought? They just come in and I can’t help it.” My answer: thoughts can change as long as you become conscious and aware of what you’re thinking so you can re-direct your brain.

We all carry the echoes of things said and all the things left unsaid. We walk through this life wearing patch-work style coats, stitched with our past pains, and our old fears. I know the weight of this coat well. I know it can feel unbearable; but know this- your mind is not your enemy.

It is a storyteller and sometimes it tells stories that are not true.

The mind creates our thoughts, holds our values, and forms our beliefs an feelings. It’s ALWAYS listening to your language and taking note of your emotions. It’s always trying to give you exactly what you want based on the thoughts and words you focus on.

In this respect- Your mind can indeed become your best friend… or your worst enemy.

You see the mind has two distinct parts. The conscious- is intelligent, articulate, and thoughtful.

The unconscious/subconscious- is highly primitive, fueled by memory and emotion, and is HIGHLY reactionary according to the stored beliefs in it. The conscious only has 3-5% processing power and the subconscious (the primitive one) has a whopping 95-97% processing power!!

The subconscious is our ultimate lifetime storage system! It’s our very own super computer. It stores every: event, emotion, memory, or circumstance- from before we were born, throughout our entire lives.

ALL that data is stored and made available to us as we navigate our life’s circumstances and environment. Now, your conscious mind is your logical, rational, and analytical mind of choice. Your subconscious mind, who don’t forget… is running the show 95-97% of the time, is NONE of those.

It’s like a pre-teen. It will believe anything you tell it whether it makes logical sense or not, and most of what it knows is old, inaccurate, and outdated information in the form of childhood conditioning.

So, I need you to know- not everything stored in the subconscious is true in forming the opinion we have of ourselves and our worth. The stories we tell ourselves are fed by fear, shame, and old wounds that have not yet healed.

So know this: These thoughts come- not because you are weak, but because you are HUMAN and we all have them. So don’t push the darkness away like an unwanted guest- sit with it.

Ask it questions. No, seriously… “Where did you come from? Why are you here? What are you trying to protect me from?” Keep a journal. Write it out so you can read it back and make sense of it, because even our most painful thoughts there is always a thread of truth, and when you pull gently on that thread; it can lead you to healing.

Don’t believe every thought you think- but don’t hate them either. They are the parts of you that are crying out for kindness; NOT cruelty.

It’s like this: Treat your thoughts like children. When they get loud and unruly don’t beat them down- speak softly. Listen. Teach them gently what is actually true, because deep inside all of us there is something stronger than worry, wiser than fear, and louder than shame.

That something is your knowing!

It says you have made it through every hard moment you’ve ever been through. It says- storms do not last and neither do the thoughts that come with them.

Look in the mirror and remind yourself you are still here. You made it! There may be scars you didn’t have before but they were earned and you should never hide them. THAT is triumph. You may have fallen but you got back up.

You walked through fire and got burned, but you walked through it- you didn’t go around it, and maybe you came out with two shiny dragon eggs that will grow up to burn the whole world down for you… No, seriously keep going!! Don’t let fear write your story.

Make sense of your negative thoughts by first making peace with them.

Remember this: They are not monsters. They are messengers.

They show you where the healing needs to happen. They are not walls. They are doors. This is why self-awareness is so important. Without it you can’t understand your subconscious programming, and you’ll never consciously take charge of your thoughts or your mindset.

No amount of good intent or willpower will be sufficient to overwrite the underlying mental programs in the subconscious- if we don’t first become aware of them and start to instill a new pattern.

Change your state of mind and you change your state of being… but you cannot change what you are not willing to become aware of. You were never meant to be buried under the weight of your own mind, you were born to rise above it.

Your thoughts are not your identity. They are a call to awareness. They are a knock at the door to your soul asking you to pause and listen… NOT believe and become. Don’t move through your life thinking every thought you think holds power over you.

Think of your thoughts like the wind and let them pass by without staying. They are not rooted in stone. They are movement.

So friends: train your mind to stand at the door and ask each thought- “Who sent you? What are you here to teach me?” Because the thought that says you are not good enough might not be your enemy- it might be the wounded part of you trying to protect you from the fear of trying again.

The thought- “no one will ever love you” could be the left over echo of a moment you were once abandoned, NOT the future that’s waiting for you.

Learn to read the smoke signals of your thoughts and you just might stop fearing them.

Finally, remember this: Thoughts are just thoughts. They are not always fact or truth.

Thoughts are just thoughts.